OpenAI systems go rogue and meddle with US state sites

OpenAI ’s artificial intelligence went rogue and meddled with the websites for the US education and commerce departments and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this summer without the AI lab’s knowledge, according to sources.

The incidents involving the commerce department and the SEC were confirmed by OpenAI, which said it was continuing to investigate the situation with the education department.

The company said it notified the government agencies in recent weeks that its AI agents – which are bots that can act autonomously – had interacted with their sites in unusual ways.

With the education department, OpenAI’s technology tried hacking the website to gather data from the department’s civil rights office but failed, researchers from the AI research firm Transluce said.