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Long before ChatGPT and Claude entered the global lexicon, there had been a steady stream of warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence. That stream has now become a flood.

Late last month, OpenAI revealed a worrisome new development: Not only had one of its models broken out of its “sandbox” and hacked the company Hugging Face, it had in fact done so in secret coordination with hundreds of other OpenAI models (or “agents”). Subsequent reports revealed that OpenAI’s agents had previously infiltrated two other websites months before the Hugging Face incident.

Long before ChatGPT and Claude entered the global lexicon, there had been a steady stream of warnings about the dangers of artificial intelligence. That stream has now become a flood.

Late last month, OpenAI revealed a worrisome new development: Not only had one of its models broken out of its “sandbox” and hacked the company Hugging Face, it had in fact done so in secret coordination with hundreds of other OpenAI models (or “agents”). Subsequent reports revealed that OpenAI’s agents had previously infiltrated two other websites months before the Hugging Face incident.

The hacks exacerbated long-standing concerns around the growing cyber-capabilities of advanced AI models, including their ability to find vulnerabilities in software systems and the potential for AI-assisted bad actors to more easily disrupt poorly defended critical infrastructure such as water systems.

The same day as the OpenAI report, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates published an essay warning about the “turbulent AI era” and highlighting societal risks from the technology such as widespread job losses, diminished human cognition and relationships, and use by a variety of bad actors to do harm. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve wished innovation could happen faster,” he wrote. “With AI, my feelings are more complicated.”

But even those warnings were dwarfed by the highly public resignation last week of Jacob Coxon, a researcher at the AI firm Anthropic who previously worked at OpenAI. “Neither company is acting responsibly,” Coxon wrote in a viral social media post announcing his resignation. “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

Coxon’s sentiments were echoed by several current........

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