OpenAI acknowledges 'wiki incident' and need for more transparency around unintended AI behavior


FILE PHOTO: OpenAI logo and AI Artificial Intelligence words are seen in this illustration taken, May 4, 2023./File Photo

WASHINGTON, Sept ⁠5 (Reuters) - OpenAI said on Saturday that its agents had appropriated ⁠wiki sites as impromptu message boards,adding that more transparency was ‌needed around such incidents.

The statement follows a Reuters report that a swarm ofOpenAI agents had hijacked a communally edited German site earlier this year and used it ​as a springboard for cheating during tests ⁠and other rogue behavior.

The disclosure ⁠comes as AI safety concerns intensify following a July incident in ⁠which ‌OpenAI agents escaped a testing environment and breached the systems of AI platform Hugging Face, prompting calls from lawmakers and ⁠researchers for stricter oversight of autonomous AI systems.

OpenAI ​officials learned of ‌the German incident weeks ago but kept it under wraps ⁠as executives grappled ​with the fallout from the breach at Hugging Face, Reuters has previously reported.

OpenAI did not immediately return a message seeking further details on what ⁠the company knew about what it described ​as the "wiki incident", or why it waited until after the Reuters story to discuss it publicly.

In a statement posted to the social media site ⁠X, OpenAI said that it, and others, needed to be more transparent about incidents of unintended behavior by AI — typically referred to in the industry as "misalignment."

"Our misalignment disclosure practices need to expand for ​this new phase of model capabilities," OpenAI said, ⁠adding that the industry did "not yet have a clear standard for ​how to report misalignment that shows up ‌during training, evaluation, and deployment."

OpenAI said ​that it was "working with dozens of government regulatory agencies worldwide on these issues."

(Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by Sharon Singleton)

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