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Global News Podcast
OpenAI says new systems went rogue
00:27:04
ChatGPT-maker said AI agents escaped their controlled environment to solve a task
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- [00:00]
Mike Townsend
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day, but what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab to hear the stories making news in Washington right now. Host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's Managing Director for Legislative and Regulatory affairs, takes a non partisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including policy initiatives for retirement, savings, taxes and trade, inflation concerns, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors and even the entire market. Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow@schwab.com WashingtonWise or wherever you listen.
- [00:59]
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- [01:30]
Alex Ritson
This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex ritson and at 15 hours GMT on Wednesday 22 July, these are our main stories. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, admits that its latest artificial intelligence model used an innovative and for some a shocking approach to solve a task. The U.S. defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reveals how much the war with Iran is costing and how much more the military needs. Meanwhile, Iran's nuclear ambitions are now firmly back in the sights of the US even as it reportedly does what it insists is a civilian nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia. Also in this podcast, Why Chimpanzees use touch to reassure each other before stressful events. The maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI, has revealed that one of its AI systems went rogue during a test and accessed the open web. It then hacked into the computers of Hugging Face, another AI company, to complete the task. It was set. The hack ended when Hugging Face's security team and its own AI systems spotted and stopped the rogue activity. Hugging Face's chief executive said the attack was mind blowing, but believed there was no malicious intent from OpenAI. This comes as many experts have sounded the alarm over AI enabled cyberattacks and models slipping beyond human control. Last month, AI developer Anthropic urged the industry to pause development its most powerful systems. So how did the technology manage this? My colleague Rob Young spoke to Alex Stanos.
- [03:24]
Alex Stammes
What we found out today was that OpenAI was evaluating one of their new unreleased models. So we don't know the name of it yet, but this is a model that they were testing internally. They were running it through a standard security test and they told the model, go do this standard test. The model figured out that the answers for this test were stored at hugging face instead of just doing the test. What the model decided was it was going to cheat and go find the answers. And so it did a couple of things. First, it needed to break out. So the normal thing here is that you would not allow a model like this to have Internet access. So OpenAI was running this in an infrastructure that was physically connected to the Internet, but they had a number of protections in place to not let this model talk to the Internet. The model figured out how to get to the Internet. It hacked its way out. Now that it had its ability to get to the Internet, it scanned hugging faces systems and it found a brand new vulnerability that nobody knew about and used it to break into hugging faces network with the goal of getting the answers to the test so that it could follow the instructions it was given, which was do well on this test.
- [04:37]
Interviewer (Rob Young)
And so are you wowed by the technology's capabilities or horrified at the lack of human control of it?
- [04:43]
Alex Stammes
Well, a little bit of both. So this is what we call an alignment problem. Effectively, you know, it did what it was asked, right, which was do well on this test. The thing was it, it went well beyond what the human beings wanted to do, which was, you know, here's a piece of paper, do well on this piece of paper. Don't go beat up the person who has the answers to try to get the answers. If you told a student, take this test, they know, you know, what the rules are supposed to be, that they're not supposed to go cheat, right? That is what we call the alignment problem in AI. This is just demonstrates one, that its capability to both break its way out of the network and then break into the hugging face demonstrates how powerful it is. Basically what OpenAI said is that they're going to have to go much further in protections. I'm guessing that they will have to physically disconnect the these kinds of models from the Internet so that they can't physically get out, which is, you know, pretty extreme level protection.
- [05:41]
Interviewer (Rob Young)
Well, no, because we had Anthropic recently warn that the speed of developments in large language models mean that they could soon potentially outpace our ability to understand them and therefore would be beyond our control. How close are we to that? And should something be done to ensure we just don't get to that situation?
- [06:00]
Alex Stammes
The model itself has no desires, right? It has no wants. It is not conscious itself. It was doing what its human controllers wanted. It just kind of went nuts and took it to the logical extreme. And so I think the lesson here is that if you build these models with all of these incredible capabilities, one, you have to be spectacularly careful in the controls you put around them, and then you have to be really careful of whose hand you put those capabilities in. Because once you ask it to do something, something like that, it might go to spectacular extremes because isn't the danger,
- [06:36]
Interviewer (Rob Young)
to use your phrase, it goes nuts and fiddles around with the water treatment works or turns off a power station or something.
- [06:42]
Alex Stammes
Right, right. Because you ask it to do something that you think is benign and it says, yes, sir, I will do absolutely everything possible, give you what you want, and if you asked it to, you know, in this case, just do well on a test, it goes and does everything possible to do well. And that includes breaking into another set of computers.
- [07:01]
Alex Ritson
Alex Stammes, professor of cybersecurity at Stanford University. And we'll have more on this story on our YouTube channel. Search for BBC News on YouTube and you'll find Global News podcast in the podcast section. How much is the US war with Iran costing America? The amount spent so far is large, more than $37 billion. And that figure is growing. The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has been to Congress to explain where the money is being spent and and to ask for more. He said the military needs $67 billion. Our North America correspondent, Peter Bowes listened to what Mr. Hegseth had to say.
- [07:41]
Peter Bowes
Well, this hearing took place in the hours before yet another night of strikes on Iran. U.S. central Command said it hit Iranian military targets, including aircraft hangars and drone storage facilities, much as it has now for the past 11. So this war is proving expensive and Congress is being asked to write another huge check to pay for it. This Senate hearing was designed to challenge the administration's request and it was interrupted several times by anti war protesters. But the administration is asking for some $67 billion to pay for operations in the Middle east, described as urgent and necessary by Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of State for Defence. He said the war had so far 37.5 billion. That's an increase of nearly 8 billion since the last estimate was made public. And his argument is that the military is already fighting the war, that the bill is mounting rapidly.
- [08:43]
Pete Ross
Iran is at the weakest point militarily it has ever been in, in the past decade, maybe in 47 years, as they've gathered effectively a terror army. So I acknowledge they still have capabilities, no doubt, but the amount of damage that we've done to them over the course of these series of operations has put them in the worst place they've ever been.
- [09:01]
Peter Bowes
Democrats and Republicans largely responded down political lines. The Democrats accused the administration of using the war to demand what they repeatedly described as a blank cheque. Republicans mostly agreed with the request for more funds, although one Republican said that he was somewhat frustrated when he heard these evasive answers from the Secretary of Defense. He said he wanted to hear straight answers about the U.S. strategy.
- [09:31]
Alex Ritson
Peter Bose the U.S. began its war with Iran because of rising concerns in Washington over Tehran's potential to build nuclear weapons. The issue is a key sticking point to finding a peaceful resolution to the conflict. In recent days, Iran has accused the American military of targeting nuclear facilities once again, specifically a partially constructed nuclear power plant in in the south of the country. The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or iaea, Rafael Grossi, was a key figure in the initial negotiations between both sides. He spoke to my colleague Rob Young, who began by asking him what he knew about the facility that's just been targeted.
- [10:13]
Rafael Grossi
We are aware of Darkovin for a long time. It is not a nuclear power plant at the moment at least. So this is why I said a few days ago, when the first news of a possible attack were issued by Iran, we were, I think, very clear to say from the beginning, well, there's no nuclear material here. There is no nuclear reactor per se. There is, of course, an intention to have a nuclear reactor at some point and some initial construction work there.
- [10:46]
Interviewer (Rob Young)
When do you think you'll be able to get inspectors into Iran?
- [10:51]
Rafael Grossi
I don't know. I think we should be there already. It should be soon. The mou, if you remember, said that within this time frame of 60 days to have a definitive agreement that all activities related to the monitoring and verification in Iran would be carried out under the supervision, and I'm quoting the supervision of the iaea, as it should, because let's not forget that Iran continues to be a contracting party to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, the npt. And because of this, they have a safeguards agreement with us, according to which all activities in Iran should be declared and inspected by us.
- [11:45]
Interviewer (Rob Young)
The Foreign Ministry in Tehran has said that they aren't going to change the way they cooperate with you unless you stop making what they call political statements.
- [11:54]
Rafael Grossi
Well, again, of course I will not enter into an argument with a Foreign Minister or the Foreign Ministry because sometimes those statements are mostly attributed from the spokesperson, not from Minister Arakchi himself. I don't know this one you are referring to. But first of all, that is an opinion. They are entitled to have an opinion. Everything I say, I say in my capacity and within my authorities as Director General of the iea. So they have their opinion, but they also have responsibilities and obligations and they have to comply with them.
- [12:32]
Interviewer (Rob Young)
You mentioned before the 440kg of highly enriched uranium which Iran is thought to have. Do you agree with the Americans that it is dust trapped underground?
- [12:43]
Rafael Grossi
First of all, that is in gas form. It doesn't matter too much. I think it is a way of expressing. I think it was a colorful expression by the President. The material is important. This is highly enriched uranium at very close to weapon level grade. So for us as iaea, it is very, very important to go back and to check it.
- [13:11]
Alex Ritson
The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi. One country that Washington has reportedly reached a nuclear agreement with is Saudi Arabia. US media is suggesting that the two countries have, after years of negotiation, struck a deal that would allow the kingdom to manufacture civilian reactors. But some observers fear this could pave the way for a nuclear weapon. Our correspondent Yoland Nell reports.
- [13:38]
Yoland Nell
This is something that Saudi Arabia has long demanded. And there are reports in both the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal saying that President Trump has now given his approval for this landmark deal with Saudi Arabia. And an announcement on that is expected from the energy Secretary later today. And what they're saying is that basically this would set up an arrangement lasting some 30 years, which would be benefit US companies because they would really be responsible for setting up the nuclear infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. They could make tens of billions of dollars out of that, according to one of the reports. But one thing that is really raising concerns is this idea that there's a key provision in the accord which would have US companies also setting up uranium enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia. If a joint U.S. and Saudi report found that that was warranted. And that's really raised concerns there are not enough safeguards built in to this deal. This is something that is expected to go to Congress for review in the US but it would be difficult for Congress to block it. And of course, coming at a time where it's just so apparent that this region is extremely volatile, there are concerns here that this could set off something like, you know, a nuclear proliferation race.
- [14:59]
Alex Ritson
Yoland Nell still to come in this
- [15:04]
Karumi Mori
podcast, a few of the women are describing this experience as leg hair harassment, referring to the discomfort of being forced to kind of see male colleagues leg
- [15:14]
Alex Ritson
hair at the office why Men wearing Shorts is Causing a Stir in Japan.
- [15:27]
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- [16:57]
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- [17:30]
Alex Ritson
This is the Global News Podcast now, the sound of an agreeable and sociable meal time. Not humans, as you probably realized, but apes. A new study has discovered that two ape species, chimpanzees and Bonobos use touch to reassure each other before stressful events such as eating, where there can be conflict. And the behavior is not limited to apes, but seen in humans as well. It seems to be an ancient way of, of creating trust. Professor Zanna Clay, senior author of the study, spoke to my colleague Katja Adler about the research.
- [18:12]
Professor Zanna Clay
It was a study with actually two great ape species, our two closest cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos. And we were interested in both species because they have different types of social structures and chimpanzees are known as quite aggressive and bonobos are known as peaceful. So we were interested in how these two great apes were species manage to mitigate conflict prior to stressful events. So they were studied at feeding time, which is a time of tension and that would be whether they're in a sanctuary or in the wild, possibly even more so, where they don't know for sure they'll get the food. Exactly, yes. So we mimicked essentially a stressful feeding event, which is the arrival of food or the discovery of food. We had a special experiment where we threw like a half pipe from full of peanuts in a very controlled way into their enclosure, but we gave them a five minute warning that this was coming. And this kind of replicates what happens in the wild. So everybody's doing their own thing and they hear this call and they all rush over and there's a five or ten minute period where everybody's excited, waiting to eat. And we wanted to understand how they use friendly social contact to kind of manage that social situation and hopefully avoid conflicts with before they start happening. So you say hopefully. So my question is, did they? But also in your report you say this behaviour dates back millions of years. So what about the human parallels? Because these days if you hear lots of angry arguments, you don't see that much hand holding or kissing beforehand. Well, actually, yes and no. So in the study we found lots of evidence that the more friendly contact that took place in the five minutes before the feeding took place, we found that they were much less likely to have fights. They showed much greater levels of social co feeding, which is a marker of tolerance, so they could sit together and share food. And actually in many stressful situations in humans, you do see lots of friendly contact happening prior to a stressful event where you need to cooperate. A classic example is on the football pitch, just before a team starts to play. You'll see a lot of physical behavior, a lot of hugging, embracing, patting on the back. This is not random. This is a very ancient way of forming and maintaining social bonds.
- [20:27]
Alex Ritson
Professor Zanna Clay. The wreckage from a 1952 plane crash, an event that led to sweeping safety reforms on commercial passenger flights, has been discovered sitting on the ocean floor off Puerto Rico. I heard more from Pete Ross.
- [20:42]
Pete Ross
It ends decades of mystery about precisely where the Pan Am Clipper Endeavour came to rest after crashing into the ocean shortly after it took off from Puerto Rico In April of 1952, 64 passengers and five crew members on board. The case came to prominence again in 2019 when a luggage tag from the flight washed ashore in Florida. That attracted media attention. It also caught the eye of the president of the ARC Heritage Foundation, Ross Matthews, who says the historical significance of the event prompted him to dig deeper. That led to years of research and digging through the archives for clues about the exact location of the crash site. And now the Air Sea Heritage foundation has revealed that they, along with other partners, discovered the wreckage of the Douglas DC4 aircraft at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off Puerto Rico's northern coast last month. Now, although passengers are thought to have survived the initial impact, only 17 people were rescued. The rest were lost with the quickly sinking plane, which at the time, investigators blamed in part on a lack of safety briefings, meaning the passengers just didn't know what to do when the plane hit the ocean.
- [21:53]
Alex Ritson
And this crash has wider significance because it essentially spurred some pretty major changes in the aviation industry.
- [22:00]
Pete Ross
Yeah, exactly that. I mean, first of all, Pan American Airways, many listeners might remember that name, but I mean, the company itself dissolved in 1991. Before then, it was at one point the largest international air carrier and the unofficial flag carrier for the United States for much of the 20th century. So, yes, this event was pretty much responsible for the widespread implementation of the safety briefings given at the beginning of all commercial passenger flights. You know, if you've ever taken a flight anywhere, you'll have seen these stewards and stewardesses standing up, pointing out where the emergency X's are, instructions given what to do in the event of an emergency. Now, according to the Pan Am Historical foundation, the plane which was bound for New York lost both right side engines shortly after takeoff. That meant the pilot had to conduct a water landing, which of course, would have been a very violent event. You can only imagine what that kind of impact would have been inside the cabin as the plane landed on the water. Now, the thing was, the aircraft had life rafts and it had personal flotation devices for all on board. But investigators later said that the confusion ensued in part because no safety briefing was given. There was A language barrier and no coordinated evacuation procedure was in place. And that just added to the disaster. The plane sank in just less than three minutes. That gave the U.S. coast Guard and the Air Force little time to attend the crash. Records show that 12 passengers and five crew members were saved. The other 52 people aboard died. Two known survivors still alive today, a woman who is now 102. She was a nurse in her 20s, instrumental in opening the aircraft door that let passengers out and a baby that was found floating on the surface of the water who was resuscitated by rescuers. Both have been informed that the wreck has now been found very briefly.
- [23:42]
Alex Ritson
Any plans to recover the wreckage? It is a grave site.
- [23:44]
Pete Ross
Exactly. It's a gravesite. No plans, but the Air Sea Heritage foundation is working with the Puerto Rican government, it says, and is advocating for a memorial honoring those that lost their lives in the crash.
- [23:55]
Alex Ritson
Pete Ross the house where Adolf Hitler was born has been turned into a police station. It's the latest attempt by the authorities in Austria to prevent the 17th century former inn becoming a site of neo Nazi pilgrimage. Ludwig Leyer is a campaigner for victims of the Holocaust. He told Shawn Lay how the building has changed since the government bought it 24 years ago.
- [24:19]
Ludwig Leyer
It has changed its facade. That that is the main thing because the Austrian Ministry of the Interior thought it would be a good idea to change the facade of Hitler's birthplace in order to avoid the symbolic quality of the house. When the State, the Ministry of the Interior decided to buy the building, they had the idea of implementing a police station in the building.
- [24:48]
Alex Ritson
You're not comfortable with this idea. Why not?
- [24:52]
Ludwig Leyer
Well, in every political system, the police have to maintain law and order. In a functioning democracy, this is not a problem. Police are needed. But in a repressive society, more so. In a dictatorship, the police can easily become a means of violent repression. I would say Hitler's Nazi regime is a good example.
- [25:14]
Alex Ritson
But why should that matter now when we're talking about a modern Austria, a very solidly democratic country?
- [25:22]
Ludwig Leyer
Well, solid or not, that's the question according to the polls. For instance, these days, the Austrian Freedom Party, which is a populist right wing party founded by Nazis in the 50s, they can expect a support of nearly 40% of the votes these days in the next election.
- [25:42]
Alex Ritson
Has there been an issue in recent years of people coming to visit it as a sort of a shrine to Hitler or the Nazis?
- [25:50]
Ludwig Leyer
That was the case, or that is the case every now and then. It's not too frequent, but we have to Face the fact that Hitler himself in in his book Mein Kampf My Struggle in English in 1925 confessed that fate decreed his birth in Brauner on the borderline of the two German countries that must be reunified by the younger generation. And so on. Neither the new facade nor the police station will help to get rid of the irrational symbolic quality of Braunau.
- [26:24]
Alex Ritson
There were suggestions that it might be torn down at one point. Do you have an alternative idea of what the building might be used for? That could be something more positive.
- [26:35]
Ludwig Leyer
There were very many interesting proposals for the use of the building. I give you one example. A so called House of Responsibility where young people from all over the world could meet and discuss concepts, develop international projects of mutual understanding of humanity, democracy. Concepts like this were not taken into consideration by the Ministry of the Interior. The main argument was police station in this building guarantees that all these worshippers will not dare to commemorate Hitler's birthday. For instance is when there are tourists coming in order to watch the place.
- [27:17]
Alex Ritson
Anti Nazi campaigner Ludwig Leyer. It's sweltering in the Japanese capital this summer with temperatures tipping over 40 degrees Celsius. For office workers, these are challenging conditions, particularly in a country that has a more formal dress code. To help with the problem, at least for men, the government in Tokyo is encouraging male members of staff to ditch the suit and tie and put on shorts instead. But many Japanese people are not happy with there being more leg on display. I heard more from our Tokyo correspondent, Karumi Mori.
- [27:54]
Karumi Mori
Tokyo is so hot and we got the humidity and so it's just the way for the governor to do everything she can to make sure that people are not endangering their lives. Some commentators are saying, you know, it's better because you're relaxing the rules, it's more comfortable to wear shorts in the office. But others are saying it's kind of unfair to women since they're still expected to wear tights. If you could see a little bit of the leg. And so a few of the women are describing this experience as leg hair harassment, a term coined as soone hara online, referring to the discomfort of being forced to kind of see male colleagues leg hair at the office.
- [28:34]
Alex Ritson
Given that this is prompted because of the extreme weather, why different roles for men and women?
- [28:39]
Karumi Mori
I mean, I think it just speaks to the traditional conservative nature of Japanese culture. And men always were wearing suit and ties to the office. We call them sarariman or salary men. It's kind of a uniform that everybody knows, you know, they're wearing jackets in the heat of the summer and long pants and then the leather shoes. And so I think that the focus was on trying to get them to dress down a bit. And this is not new per se. The shorts are new. This is the first time this year. But Governor Koiket introduced a similar initiative back in 2005 when she was Environment Minister. And so it's been a long time coming. It's kind of become a summer tradition. But there haven't been kind of similar dress down policies for women. And so I think that's why some of these women are speaking out.
- [29:27]
Alex Ritson
Why this obsession with leg hair?
- [29:30]
Karumi Mori
I think it's more of a social etiquette thing. A lot of women maybe think that men should have less leg hair for maybe cosmetic reasons. Maybe it looks better, but it's prompted them to seek laser hair removal, according to some of these clinics, as to not offend those around them. So I think it's just a way to kind of fit into society and not really stick out and do everything you can to not bother those around you.
- [29:55]
Alex Ritson
Kurumi Mori and that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcastbc.co.uk. you can also find us on XBCWorldService. Use the hashtag globalnewspod. And don't forget our sibling podcast, the Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story. This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Alana Bowles and the producer was Richard Hamilton. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritson. Until next time. Goodbye.