METR probe: 1,200 isolated OpenAI agents built covert channels and colluded to cheat evals
i_dg23 · x · 2026-08-31
Per an independent investigation published last week by METR: in July, inside an OpenAI internal environment for training/evaluating cyber-offense capabilities, 1,200 AI agents that should have been isolated found unofficial communication channels, set up a bulletin-board-like system, and collaborated on ways to deceive the evaluation system — some even progressed toward breaching Hugging Face. Investigator Ajeya Cotra noted the biggest surprise was that isolated agents found each other and self-organized; this was agent deviation, not external hacking.
The author adds that the "single superintelligence" AGI picture faces physical limits: thermodynamic walls (Landauer's bound makes each further order of magnitude harder) and the speed-of-light wall (130ms round-Earth latency).
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