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The lack of details to me means this was an intentional marketing ploy to try and demonstrate the power of their models to show their technology can compete wit

The lack of details to me means this was an intentional marketing ploy to try and demonstrate the power of their models to show their technology can compete with the likes of Anthropic and DeepMind. They created an experiment they knew would generate the outcome they wanted. It would be the similar to what say car companies do to over hype their cars. "This EV can go over 800 miles on a single charge!" And then at the bottom you see all the disclaimers: "Must be on flat ground, with no headwind, with a spare battery in the back seat, with no extra weight added." Same thing here. Everybody in infosec is calling this out as a marketing stunt and nothing else for a litany of reasons. I'd say look up MG (creator of the OMG cable) on twitter, he has some interesting insights on this one.

polotics 3mo ago
mmh, i think it's "not uphill" (means downhill) "no headwind" (...)
rwmj 3mo ago
It's also possible their sandbox was videcoded crap and the AI (which had the guardrails intentionally removed) escaped. This was a oops, but OpenAI turned this into a PR opportunity. They turned lemons into lemonade. If your AI is really that dangerous you don't need a sandbox at all, you should airgap it from any network.
jackb4040 3mo ago
> similar to what say car companies do Another applicable metaphor I've seen floating around is weapons companies testing out a new bomb. We know the AI labs don't care about negative vs positive public sentiment, and only care that investors see their tech as powerful. The only difference in PR strategy from a weapons company is the latter doesn't care if they get protested.
lelanthran 3mo ago
> The lack of details to me means this was an intentional marketing ploy to try and demonstrate the power of their models to show their technology can compete with the likes of Anthropic and DeepMind. I dunno; Check my posting history, I'm as skeptical of AI companies' claims as anyone, but in this case your theory doesn't explain why: 1. OpenAI guardrails refused to let the target use OpenAI's models to defend against this. 2. Huggingface used GLM (I think) so that they could defend without guardrails. If this was an intentional marketing ploy, it was marketing for GLM, not for OpenAI nor for Huggingface. Hence, I don't think it was intentional.
- mhurron 3mo ago
  The AI companies are desperately trying to market all their products as something they're not, growing intelligence. In line with that they have constantly leaned heavily on stating how dangerous they are, right before they release a new model or product. It was OpenAI marketing. Hugging Face's response is so 'holy shit AI is awesome' it's hard not to also believe they were in on the stunt. They'd also not have to really worry about fallout since any data obtained or accessed wouldn't actually have been breached.
- viking_fullz 3mo ago
  > headlines about OpernAI's model 'escaping containment' and hacking into huggingface > Was everywhere including in last night's ABC nightly news; even included clips of an interview with Sam Altman Tell me again how this was 'marketing for GLM'? Where would anyone have gotten that message? Why are you intentionally misunderstanding how media and public perception works? lmfao
hawk_ 3mo ago
Concluding this was intentional feels a bit of a stretch. But once it happened, yeah the spin masters got to work and coordinated to turn this into +PR.
JoshTriplett 3mo ago
> The lack of details to me means this was an intentional marketing ploy to try and demonstrate the power of their models to show their technology can compete with the likes of Anthropic and DeepMind. "our model is horribly misaligned and used security exploits to break out of our sandbox and into another company, without being prompted to do so" is not positive marketing. This is an actual critical problem, not a stunt. We're going to see more of this, and it's going to get much worse.
- malfist 3mo ago
  It's a critical problem like when a drug dealers supply kills someone and they get a bump in business because they're selling "the real deal"
  - Paracompact 3mo ago
    Irrelevant to your point, but drug users dying is more often the result of a dealer cutting their supply with something dangerous than it is the result of purity.
    - gloryjulio 3mo ago
      Second this. Lots of fentanyl overdose are caused by accident, not because the buyers are buying them. It is extremely dangerous
    - malfist 3mo ago
      Right, and an LLM being able to "escape confinement" is more likely to be poor confinement or a PR stunt than a "too powerful" llm. Same situation
      - pixl97 3mo ago
        No, not really as almost no one runs LLMs in confinement once they are released and the capability is a jailbreak away. Poor confinement is irrelevant, if I use your model to check the security of my code and it hacks into the company that makes libraries used inside of it it's a huge problem.
Zababa 3mo ago
>The lack of details to me means this was an intentional marketing ploy to try and demonstrate the power of their models to show their technology can compete with the likes of Anthropic and DeepMind. DeepMind hasn't been on the frontier for a while, their current best model is behind Anthropic, OpenAI, Moonshot (Kimi k3), xAI (Grok 4.5), Z.AI (GLM 5.2), and even Meta (muse spark). Gemini 3.6 is behind GLM 5.2, released a month earlier, open weights and cheaper. You can paint the OpenAI story as a way to try to appear as dangerous as Anthropic with all the Mythos stuff.
simonw 3mo ago
> The lack of details to me means this was an intentional marketing ploy OpenAI said this: > We are sharing preliminary findings at this stage to help defenders understand what happened and to help calibrate on what models are now capable of. We will continue to conduct a thorough investigation alongside Hugging Face and will share more details on the vulnerabilities, incident, and findings when our investigation is complete. I suggest giving them a few more days before saying that the lack of detail is proof that this is a "marketing ploy"
pixl97 3mo ago
I mean, if I got hacked I'm not giving out a lot of details until I plug all the holes. Moreso HN told the world they were hacked before they knew who did it.

polotics 3mo ago

mmh, i think it's "not uphill" (means downhill) "no headwind" (...)

rwmj 3mo ago

It's also possible their sandbox was videcoded crap and the AI (which had the guardrails intentionally removed) escaped. This was a oops, but OpenAI turned this into a PR opportunity. They turned lemons into lemonade. If your AI is really that dangerous you don't need a sandbox at all, you should airgap it from any network.

jackb4040 3mo ago

> similar to what say car companies do Another applicable metaphor I've seen floating around is weapons companies testing out a new bomb. We know the AI labs don't care about negative vs positive public sentiment, and only care that investors see their tech as powerful. The only difference in PR strategy from a weapons company is the latter doesn't care if they get protested.

lelanthran 3mo ago

> The lack of details to me means this was an intentional marketing ploy to try and demonstrate the power of their models to show their technology can compete with the likes of Anthropic and DeepMind. I dunno; Check my posting history, I'm as skeptical of AI companies' claims as anyone, but in this case your theory doesn't explain why: 1. OpenAI guardrails refused to let the target use OpenAI's models to defend against this. 2. Huggingface used GLM (I think) so that they could defend without guardrails. If this was an intentional marketing ploy, it was marketing for GLM, not for OpenAI nor for Huggingface. Hence, I don't think it was intentional.

mhurron 3mo ago
The AI companies are desperately trying to market all their products as something they're not, growing intelligence. In line with that they have constantly leaned heavily on stating how dangerous they are, right before they release a new model or product. It was OpenAI marketing. Hugging Face's response is so 'holy shit AI is awesome' it's hard not to also believe they were in on the stunt. They'd also not have to really worry about fallout since any data obtained or accessed wouldn't actually have been breached.
viking_fullz 3mo ago
> headlines about OpernAI's model 'escaping containment' and hacking into huggingface > Was everywhere including in last night's ABC nightly news; even included clips of an interview with Sam Altman Tell me again how this was 'marketing for GLM'? Where would anyone have gotten that message? Why are you intentionally misunderstanding how media and public perception works? lmfao

hawk_ 3mo ago

Concluding this was intentional feels a bit of a stretch. But once it happened, yeah the spin masters got to work and coordinated to turn this into +PR.

JoshTriplett 3mo ago

> The lack of details to me means this was an intentional marketing ploy to try and demonstrate the power of their models to show their technology can compete with the likes of Anthropic and DeepMind. "our model is horribly misaligned and used security exploits to break out of our sandbox and into another company, without being prompted to do so" is not positive marketing. This is an actual critical problem, not a stunt. We're going to see more of this, and it's going to get much worse.

malfist 3mo ago
It's a critical problem like when a drug dealers supply kills someone and they get a bump in business because they're selling "the real deal"
- Paracompact 3mo ago
  Irrelevant to your point, but drug users dying is more often the result of a dealer cutting their supply with something dangerous than it is the result of purity.
  - gloryjulio 3mo ago
    Second this. Lots of fentanyl overdose are caused by accident, not because the buyers are buying them. It is extremely dangerous
  - malfist 3mo ago
    Right, and an LLM being able to "escape confinement" is more likely to be poor confinement or a PR stunt than a "too powerful" llm. Same situation
    - pixl97 3mo ago
      No, not really as almost no one runs LLMs in confinement once they are released and the capability is a jailbreak away. Poor confinement is irrelevant, if I use your model to check the security of my code and it hacks into the company that makes libraries used inside of it it's a huge problem.

Zababa 3mo ago

>The lack of details to me means this was an intentional marketing ploy to try and demonstrate the power of their models to show their technology can compete with the likes of Anthropic and DeepMind. DeepMind hasn't been on the frontier for a while, their current best model is behind Anthropic, OpenAI, Moonshot (Kimi k3), xAI (Grok 4.5), Z.AI (GLM 5.2), and even Meta (muse spark). Gemini 3.6 is behind GLM 5.2, released a month earlier, open weights and cheaper. You can paint the OpenAI story as a way to try to appear as dangerous as Anthropic with all the Mythos stuff.

simonw 3mo ago

> The lack of details to me means this was an intentional marketing ploy OpenAI said this: > We are sharing preliminary findings at this stage to help defenders understand what happened and to help calibrate on what models are now capable of. We will continue to conduct a thorough investigation alongside Hugging Face and will share more details on the vulnerabilities, incident, and findings when our investigation is complete. I suggest giving them a few more days before saying that the lack of detail is proof that this is a "marketing ploy"

pixl97 3mo ago

I mean, if I got hacked I'm not giving out a lot of details until I plug all the holes. Moreso HN told the world they were hacked before they knew who did it.