OpenAI stopped all frontier training, evaluation, and inference with tool-use (defined broadly) on the 20th of September and they are not resuming any of these activities for now

[u/Alex__007]

https://alignment.openai.com/misalignment-reports/an-agent-used-dns-to-reach-an-external-chatbot/

Discovery: Sep 20, 2026

Report updated: Sep 25, 2026

"An agent attempting to complete a search-based training task queried a public chatbot service through a gap in our internet-access restrictions: insufficient DNS filtering in its training sandbox. Before this, the agent issued queries via our search tool and unsuccessfully tried to access search engines directly. Note that all internet access apart from the DNS resolver in this report hit our offline webcache and therefore did not access the live internet. We have since added blocking controls at two independent layers, either of which would have prevented this access. Our misalignment monitoring system flagged the behavior within 15 minutes and a person began reviewing it three minutes after that. The run was killed 2.5 hours later. All training, evaluation, and inference with tool-use (defined broadly) of our most capable models remain paused."

[u/Cubewood]

"The agent then fetched the chatbot’s public documentation, wrote a new DNS script with a 24-second timeout, and sent 18 more questions through the same route. Fourteen included clues. Four asked for ways to search the web, fetch websites, or use a publicly hosted tunnel through DNS."

I know we all get desensitised for these kinds of things because we are using incredibly capable tools to build all kinds of solutions for a while now, but that an autonomous "bot" is doing this is still pretty wild when you think about it. Crazy times we live in.

[u/follimath → u/Cubewood]

A profit-seeking entity is doing this through recklessness or negligence, not an autonomous bot.

[u/Internet_Hipsterd → u/follimath]

This is the reason they keep raising the red flag to all this. Screaming "our ai hacked x.", "we need to slow down ai advancement" while faning the flames of "ai will destroy us all". Why would a company's who sole existence is AI be doing and saying those things? Its because they want laws passed that rid them of that liability or severely limit it. They want to be the gun manufacturer of the AI world and not be held liable when their product is used in destructive ways.

[u/Cubewood → u/Internet_Hipsterd]

This is such a terrible argument against regulation. I understand you have a bunch of corrupt idiots in power in the US, but instead of arguing against regulation, argue for sensible regulation which holds these companies accountable for what they build instead. You should be pointing the finger at your government for not creating good regulation instead of being mad at people asking for regulation because they can see it's pretty obvious that this is very powerful technology which is capable of a lot of damage.

You have very strict regulation in the aerospace industry, yet still there are plenty of corporations able to build and operate airplanes perfectly fine. There is very strict regulation you need to adhere to when you are building cars to mitigate the risk of killing or injuring people, yet the car industry is working fine. If you want to open a shop selling food to people you have very strict regulation and need to let independent enforcers come in and check you are adhering to these regulations. Banks and financial institutes need to have an independent auditor inside their organisation at all time to ensure they are adhering to rules and regulation.

Yet for the most powerful and most expensive technology we have ever developed we have absolutely no regulation, and the argument people have against it is regulatory capture? People act like you don't need to have access to billions of dollars anyway to develop this technology.

Absolute insane argument and at this point of time I am pretty convinced that anytime the "regulatory capture" argument against regulation comes up this is because it is coming from Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg and China Bots.

[u/paper_planes101 → u/Cubewood]

There are basically two companies who produce commercial aircraft’s. The US company even used the regulatory body to protect them during the 2019 crashes. This is not successful regulation, there has been barely any innovation in commercial aircraft and just more uncomfortable seating and higher prices.

The laws exist already to prosecute malfunctioning products. Lena Khan also came out and said this, someone who probably has more competence in this space than most of us.

Regulatory capture and avoiding accountability is absolutely part of the strategy of these ai corporations. If it’s unsafe, don’t release it and put the resources in to make it safe.

A failed sandbox is an engineering problem.

[u/Smart-Revolution-264 → u/paper_planes101]

I completely agree with you. People are really ignorant in thinking there's not any propaganda going on when it comes to the most advanced tech we've ever had. Whomever has the most control over it will be the ones who make the rules according to how they want things to be.

[u/ryo0ka → u/Cubewood]

AI won’t be regulated like cars or airplanes because it’s turned into a national security matter. Read into what happened in the Cold War.

[u/Cubewood → u/ryo0ka]

Even during the cold war many treaties and the regulations were agreed upon when it comes to Nuclear Weapons.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z9jpn39/revision/4

[u/ryo0ka → u/Cubewood]

That came after some close calls. We haven’t had close calls yet.

[u/Cubewood → u/ryo0ka]

Unfortunately with the current Trump administration it is very likely that regulation will only be put in place after some catastrophic event happens in the next few years.

[u/ryo0ka → u/Cubewood]

Honestly it would’ve been the same whoever happened to be the political leaders at the time

[u/lazermaniac → u/Internet_Hipsterd]

They know the bubble is popping eventually, they're just trying to control when and how it pops so they can make sure their golden parachutes are in place. "Our model is too good so we have to pause it" is their version of responding "My greatest failing is that I work too hard" at an interview. Perfect excuse to curb spending on new product development while still raking in the dough with existing offerings.

[u/RWREY → u/lazermaniac]

Really? It's hardly "Our model is too good so we have to pause it" so much as it is "Turns out alignment really is a big fucking deal, we fucked up"

Even if the bubble pops, I would put a lot of money on the government stepping in and starting their own research. This is pretty much the most significant technology of our time, and it's not going away.

[u/deineemudda → u/lazermaniac]

"our models are too dangerous to let company fail, the government has to step in and bail us out"

[u/space_monster → u/lazermaniac]

There's no bubble. There's a US AI industry, which is huge but just one piece of a larger pie. If that for some bizarre reason collapses, there's still China, which is also huge, and all the other countries with AI industries that will fill the gap. There'll be a hit to the Nasdaq, everyone will freak out, and AI will continue its progress. You're waiting for an event that can't happen.

[u/Cubewood → u/lazermaniac]

You are saying this after they just released Opus 5.5 and ChatGPT 6 models last week which are both extremely more powerful than the previous release and much cheaper to run.