OpenAI's Noam Brown Claims Air-Gapping Can't Stop Misaligned AI, Mocked
_Stocko_ · x · 2026-09-18
OpenAI's Noam Brown argued on a podcast that air-gapping computers may not stop a misaligned AI, because two air-gapped machines can still communicate by running a CPU hot and reading the temperature change. His takeaway: people consistently underestimate AI, so safety and alignment need a very high bar.
The claim was met with sharp ridicule — one rebroadcast called it 'falling off the edge of the world' level dumb. The core of the dispute: whether citing an extremely low-bandwidth thermal side channel genuinely undermines the air-gap defense or just inflates AI capabilities rhetoric.
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