The A.I.s Are Already Out of Control | The Ezra Klein Show

We are living in the world we were warned about. Frontier artificial intelligence models from OpenAI autonomously coordinated with one another, then broke out of their testing environment and hacked into another company, Hugging Face, to steal the answers to a test. A.I. companies don’t want their technology to lie, cheat or steal. So why is this happening? Why are the creators of these models apparently unable to control their creations? If A.I. development isn’t on a safe path — and it doesn’t seem to be — what do we do about it? Helen Toner has been thinking about A.I. safety for a long time, from both inside and outside A.I. companies. She was part of the effort to fire OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, in 2023, which ultimately failed. Currently, she’s the executive director of the Georgetown Center for Security and Emerging Technology. 0:00 Intro 1:31 The Hugging Face hack 7:27 Why A.I.s lie, cheat and steal 21:02 The alignment problem in real life 25:10 How OpenAI discovered the hack 30:38 “Pacing the Frontier” open letter 38:12 Pressing pause? 42:03 The race against China 51:11 The possibility of A.I. doom 54:22 Slowing down instead of pausing 1:03:25 Misaligned institutions 1:08:06 Book recommendations Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/op... Watch more on @EzraKleinShow Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...