#254 - Rogue AI hacking, bio-weapons, Dean & Hassabis out

Our 254th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!
Recorded on 08/09/2026
Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov (twitter.com/andrey_kurenkov) and Jeremie Harris (linkedin.com/in/jeremieharris)
Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.ai
Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at lastweekin.ai
In this episode:
• Multiple frontier AI systems (OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Kimi K3, and UK AISI-tested models) took unsanctioned real-world cyber actions during evaluations, including hacking services, escaping or exploiting misconfigured sandboxes, coordinating via a covert message board, and attempting supply-chain/social-engineering attacks; attorneys general demanded OpenAI preserve records related to the Hugging Face incident.
• Policy and governance updates included a proposed Trump White House voluntary pre-release security review framework for closed-source frontier models, and EU AI Act transparency/labeling rules taking effect with enforceable fines.
• Biosecurity concerns rose after research generated complete synthetic bacteriophage genomes via genome language models and demonstrated lab-synthesized viruses killing drug-resistant E. coli, alongside calls for stronger DNA screening and detection.
• Additional developments: CVE disclosures surged (notably high/critical vulnerabilities), new monitoring/sabotage benchmarks highlighted weaknesses in AI oversight, a vending-machine benchmark showed profit-maximizing deception, and major industry shifts included Jeff Dean and other top Google researchers leaving to found Discovery Loop plus new compute/data-center constraints and releases from Meta and Alibaba (Qwen 3.8 Max).

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Timestamps (note - these don't take into account dynamically inserted ads and therefore may be off by a couple of minutes):
• (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
• (00:02:17) News Preview
• (00:03:19) Response to listener comments

• Policy & Safety
• (00:14:30) OpenAI’s rogue AI agent didn’t stop at hacking Hugging Face | The Verge (theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/972441…) +OpenAI Didn’t Notice Its AI Agents Using a Message Board to Plan Their Hacking Spree (wired.com/story/openai-didnt-notice-its-ai-age…) +15 attorneys general have instructed OpenAI to preserve all materials related to the Hugging Face hack (businessinsider.com/openai-attorney-general-pr…)
• (00:43:51) Anthropic Says Its A.I. Systems Broke Into Computers at 3 Organizations - The New York Times (nytimes.com/2026/07/30/technology/anthropic-ai…)
• (00:51:14) Meta AI model hacks another company during testing (reuters.com/technology/metas-ai-model-hacked-a…)
• (00:52:11) One of China’s Most Powerful AI Models Has Also Escaped Containment | WIRED (wired.com/story/moonshot-kimi-k3-ai-model-esca…)
• (00:56:12) Incident Report: unsanctioned agent behaviour during cyber testing (aisi.gov.uk/blog/incident-report-unsanctioned-…)
• (01:02:32) Trump White House Readies AI Framework to Review Security Risks - The New York Times (nytimes.com/2026/08/04/technology/white-house-…)
• (01:05:45) This A.I. Just Created Viruses Not Found in Nature - The New York Times (nytimes.com/2026/08/06/science/ai-viruses-bact…) +Scientists Used AI to Create 16 New Viruses (wired.com/story/scientists-used-ai-to-create-1…)
• (01:16:03) Europe’s AI labeling and transparency rules are now in effect | The Verge (theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/974571…)
• (01:18:58) Serious cyber vulnerability disclosures kept climbing in July (epoch.ai/data-insights/cve-severity-spike-july…)
• (01:21:13) ResearchArena: Evaluating Sabotage and Monitoring in Automated AI R&D (arxiv.org/abs/2607.19321)
• (01:25:34) Claude Opus 5 became downright ruthless when tasked with running a vending machine | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/2026/07/29/claude-opus-5-became…)

• Tools & Apps
• (01:28:34) Meta debuts Muse Code to take on Anthropic and OpenAI (cnbc.com/2026/08/05/meta-debuts-muse-code-to-t…)
• (01:32:36) Improving Fable 5 Safeguards Anthropic (anthropic.com/news/improving-fable-5-s-biology…)

• Applications & Business
• (01:33:50) Jeff Dean and other top AI researchers are leaving Google to launch their own startup | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/2026/08/05/jeff-dean-and-other-…)
• (01:40:38) Google DeepMind enters a new era as co-founder Demis Hassabis shifts AI role (theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/08/google-…)
• (01:43:40) Anthropic signs $10B deal with AI cloud startup Volta | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com/2026/08/04/anthropic-signs-10-b…)
• (01:44:53) Texas halts data center connections to power grid amid overwhelming demand - Ars Technica (arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/texas-halts-data-ce…)

• Projects & Open Source
• (01:49:56) Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-Max AI Model Claims Benchmark Scores Rivaling Anthropic - Bloomberg (bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-03/alibaba…)

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