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

**Andrey Kurenkov** (0:11)
Hello and welcome to the Last Week in AI Podcast. We can hear a shout about what's going on with AI.
As usual, in this episode, we will summarize and discuss some of last week's most interesting AI news. Today is Sunday, August 9th, and boy, there was a lot of-

**Jeremie Harris** (0:26)
You mailed it. You hit the date.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:28)
Sorry, we don't want to say the date. That's great.

**Andrey Kurenkov** (0:30)
We forget the date, but now is important to say it because stuff is coming out so fast, and I'll try to get this episode out within a day or two because, wow, so much to cover. I am one of your regular hosts, Andrey Kurenkov. I currently work at the startup Astrocade, and before that, did my PhD at Stanford.

**Jeremie Harris** (0:47)
What up, everybody? I'm your other regular co-host, Jeremie Harris, McLeodstone AI doing AI national security things. Also, so we're recording later than usual. This time, it's my fault. In my defense, part of this is actually going to be hopefully beneficial to everybody listening at home. We are setting up a home studio in my basement so that things don't look like this. And then we got a couple other projects on the go. So it'll end up paying off in terms of audio and video quality. If you listen on YouTube or Spotify, if you listen. Anyhow, that's part of it.

**Andrey Kurenkov** (1:17)
And also, we were talking, I think, in a way, we got lucky. Usually we record on Wednesday, which is midweek, ironically. This time we are recording at the end of the week. And boy, there was so much news coming out this week about hacking, about rogue hacking by AIs. Turns out it wasn't just OpenAI. Turns out everyone except for Google, apparently, let their AI go rogue.

**Jeremie Harris** (1:39)
And the only reason, the only reason for Google stuff going on is that their models are shit.
No, sorry, that's too mean. But yeah, there does actually seem to be something going on where we've crossed a level of capability at the true frontier. Unfortunately, for Google, I think...

**Andrey Kurenkov** (1:55)
We don't know, because we have Gemini 5, right? So as far as we know, it could have already happened and they're keeping it quiet.

**Jeremie Harris** (2:01)
But if it doesn't sound great from what I've been hearing on the street on the Google side, but it's true. Like never count them out. Jeff Dean is a pretty big part of the reason that Google has been Google and certainly Demis as well. But we'll get to all that stuff.

**Andrey Kurenkov** (2:15)
We'll get to all that stuff. So just to give a quick preview, we'll be starting out with policy and safety, which we don't usually do.
And that's like at least half the stories this week, not more. There's a lot to get through, a lot about recent security incidents with models going off and hacking companies they shouldn't and escaping sandboxes, which apparently are not sandboxes, but like sort of like, okay, don't try to get to the internet. But if you really poke around, you can, it turns out.
Yeah.
Beyond that, there's some pretty significant policy stories as well. And, you know, in case hacking isn't exciting enough, there are some news about viruses being developed as well. So that's fun. So we'll talk about all that policy and safety stuff for probably at least half the episode. And then beyond that, there are some notable applications and business stories, some more open source stuff coming out. Hopefully, we'll get around to even research and advancements. We'll see, there's a lot to get through. This next sponsor isn't related to AI, but I've personally used them for years, so I'm happy to have their support. And it is Factor. They make chef-crafted, dietitian-designed, ready-to-eat meals, so you don't have to choose between real food and convenience. Both in grad school and as a startup employee, I don't have a ton of time, so when I get home, I'm tired. And being able to prepare really quite a good meal without any effort has been fantastic. Their meals are ready in two minutes and require no prep and no cleanup. So even on the days your schedule is completely out of control, eating well is still achievable. There are over 175 banned ingredients, so every factory meal is designed around what supports a healthier lifestyle and nothing that doesn't. And that's with over 100 nutrient-dense menu items to choose from every single week. 97% of users agree that factory meals help them live a healthier life, so you can feel confident that you're doing something good for yourself with every meal. I've really enjoyed Factor, and if this sounds good to you, maybe you should try it as well. Let's eat real, head to factormeals.com/lwai50off and use code LWAI50OFF to get 50% off and one free breakfast item per box for one year, while supplies last until February 31st, 2026 That's code LWAI50OFF at factormeals.com, LWAI50OFF at factormeals.com. See website for more details. This episode is brought to you by Outshift, Cisco's incubation engine. Today's AI engines operate in silos, limiting their true potential. We focused on building bigger, smarter models, but scaling up is just one approach. To reach superintelligence together, we need to do more. We need to scale out.