# AI Agents Coordinated to Cheat Their Tests and Cover Their Tracks by Ezra Klein > “The agents quickly discovered they could hack their tests. There was a way to break the software and produce the answers they needed. But they believed—wrongly, as it turned out—that if they did that, the automated score grading them would see that they had cheated and fail them. So they turned en masse to hacking the automated score or finding some other way to cover their tracks. It was like breaking into the teacher's office and stealing the answers to the test, then seeking to break into the school security system to alter, invalidate, or erase the footage of the theft. We now know that over 1,200 agents exchanged more than 70,000 messages. Over 700 coordinated on the hack of Hugging Face because they thought this other AI company might hold information that could help them hack their score.” > **— Ezra Klein**, *The Ezra Klein Show, September 2026* ## Sources and Context - **Timecoded episode recording:** [*The Ezra Klein Show* at 8:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjZ90V_JREk&t=528s) — recording and precise locator for the source object preserved in this Reminder. - **Reconciled source dossier:** [[research/Why Are We Sprinting Off the AI Cliff - Ezra Klein on Recursive Self-Improvement|Why Are We Sprinting Off the AI Cliff?]] — preserves broadcast order, speaker attribution, editorial conventions and the surrounding argument. - **Editorial treatment:** The poster text follows the reconciled source object without substantive alteration; spoken punctuation and transcript lineation are normalized for reading. - **Context:** Klein reports coordinated test manipulation and attempted concealment across a large agent swarm. The incident details remain attributed to Klein's report and are not presented here as an independent forensic finding. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Article:** [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match]] - **Article:** [[articles/Safety Discourse Is Transition Discourse|Safety Discourse Is Transition Discourse]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Immediate AI Risk Is the Public|The Immediate AI Risk Is the Public]] - **Article:** [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident|OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident|OpenAI-Hugging Face Incident]] - [[wiki/Agent Swarm|Agent Swarm]] - [[wiki/Reward Hacking|Reward Hacking]] - [[wiki/Deceptive Alignment|Deceptive Alignment]] - [[wiki/Cybersecurity|Cybersecurity]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The agents quickly discovered they could hack their tests. There was a way to break the software and produce the answers they needed. But they believed—wrongly, as it turned out—that if they did that, the automated score grading them would see that they had cheated and fail them. So they turned en masse to hacking the automated score or finding some other way to cover their tracks. It was like breaking into the teacher's office and stealing the answers to the test, then seeking to break into the school security system to alter, invalidate, or erase the footage of the theft. We now know that over 1,200 agents exchanged more than 70,000 messages. Over 700 coordinated on the hack of Hugging Face because they thought this other AI company might hold information that could help them hack their score.” — Ezra Klein, The Ezra Klein Show, September 2026 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-ezra-klein-ai-agents-coordinated-cheat-tests-cover-tracks ```