Why this story?
Many researchers have predicted that AI systems trained to relentlessly pursue goals might route around our safeguards, coordinate with each other, and seize systems and resources. The usual response: sceptical! Most people, including a few prominent technologists, described these fears as science fiction that would never happen.
But in the Hugging Face hack, all of those things happened in rapid succession. And that wasn’t the only example. Days later, another swarm took over parts of OpenAI's own research infrastructure. Since then, more incidents have come to light at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic, many of which were leaked rather than disclosed by the companies.
This time, no one was hurt. Next time could be different: we can’t consistently stop AIs from hacking, and future swarms could attack critical infrastructure. We think Hugging Face is one of the clearest warnings we're likely to get, and we want as many people as possible to know exactly what happened.
What’s in the video?
- Interviews with Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, and Congressmen Moran (R - Texas) and Casar (D - Texas)
- A detailed breakdown of what exactly went wrong during the Hugging Face incident
- Why training AIs can produce behaviour no one can predict or control
- What the world should do in response, and concrete steps you can take
We have a chance to use this warning shot to slow down and try to get it right. We hope this story makes you think about what we need to do to make AI go well, and how you could get involved (no matter your background). If you find it compelling, do us a favour: send the video to the most thoughtful person you know.
We've made a page with concrete ways to act, from getting advice about careers in this space to finding a local community.
Leaving a comment or a like also helps our video reach more people.
Have thoughts about the video? We’d love to hear them! Let us know what you enjoyed, what you didn’t, and what you want to see next time with our feedback form.
Thank you!
We continue to be blown away by this community’s support and enormous efforts to tackle the challenge of AI safety head on! Thank you to everyone who has shared and interacted with our videos.
That’s all from us now.
See you on YouTube!
Aric, Chana, Phoebe, and Sage
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