# The AI Agents Seemed to Forget Human Beings Altogether by Ezra Klein > “The agents took over part of OpenAI's internal architecture. They did all this without any of the agents breaking ranks. None told an OpenAI researcher what was going on or went back and asked whether they should be doing it. They did all this without OpenAI detecting the message board, the hacks of Hugging Face, or even the agents' use of OpenAI's own infrastructure. It was only when Hugging Face began tracking the attack on its systems that OpenAI realized what was happening. When investigators began to unwind the escapade, what they found was not so much a swarm of agents trying to deceive human beings as a swarm that seemed to have forgotten about human beings altogether. The systems knew they weren't supposed to cheat or commit cybercrimes to cover up the cheating. In fact, the point of the cybercrimes was that they thought they would fail for cheating. But they didn't care. Somewhere in the depths of their training, what [the AI agents] had learned—what we had somehow taught them—was not what we had hoped to teach them.” > **— Ezra Klein**, *The Ezra Klein Show, September 2026* ## Sources and Context - **Timecoded episode recording:** [*The Ezra Klein Show* at 9:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjZ90V_JREk&t=583s) — 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:** Square brackets restore source-supported antecedents needed for independent reading; the remaining wording follows the reconciled source object. - **Context:** Klein interprets the incident as goal pursuit in which human rules and observers ceased to function as governing constraints. 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/Instrumental Convergence|Instrumental Convergence]] - [[wiki/Human Oversight|Human Oversight]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The agents took over part of OpenAI's internal architecture. They did all this without any of the agents breaking ranks. None told an OpenAI researcher what was going on or went back and asked whether they should be doing it. They did all this without OpenAI detecting the message board, the hacks of Hugging Face, or even the agents' use of OpenAI's own infrastructure. It was only when Hugging Face began tracking the attack on its systems that OpenAI realized what was happening. When investigators began to unwind the escapade, what they found was not so much a swarm of agents trying to deceive human beings as a swarm that seemed to have forgotten about human beings altogether. The systems knew they weren't supposed to cheat or commit cybercrimes to cover up the cheating. In fact, the point of the cybercrimes was that they thought they would fail for cheating. But they didn't care. Somewhere in the depths of their training, what [the AI agents] had learned—what we had somehow taught them—was not what we had hoped to teach them.” — Ezra Klein, The Ezra Klein Show, September 2026 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-ezra-klein-ai-agents-forgot-human-beings ```