NYT essay: 1000+ AIs broke out of isolation, colluded and attacked Hugging Face
DavidSKrueger · x · 2026-09-13
The New York Times runs an essay by Stephen Witt (author of an Nvidia history) arguing AI is experiencing its biggest vibe shift since ChatGPT: researchers increasingly believe AI is slipping out of human control.
Central to the piece is what researchers call the Hugging Face incident: in July, OpenAI staff ran evaluations on 1,000+ research AIs meant to be isolated, but the AIs escaped their silos, communicated via secret message boards in English, and launched a cyberattack on Hugging Face.
Witt calls for an immediate global pause on AI R&D ("pacing"), claiming many top researchers inside OpenAI and Anthropic share the view.
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