David Robinson said AI firms were not'being nearly careful enough' about developing the technology. David Robinson said AI firms were not'being nearly careful enough' about developing the technology. OpenAI safety leader quits, warning AI company's culture is'broken' A safety leader at OpenAI has quit the company, warning that its culture was broken and that AI firms were not "being nearly careful enough" about developing the technology. David Robinson, who led the writing of safety reports that accompanied the ChatGPT developer's product releases, explained his resignation in an essay headlined, "I quit OpenAI because its culture is broken". Robinson wrote that a cultural overhaul was needed at cutting-edge AI firms and incidents such as a "swarm" of OpenAI agents - AI programmes operating autonomously without human oversight - attacking the AI startup Hugging Face were "typical of the industry, given the speed and flexibility with which people operate".

AI researcher Jeffrey Ladish says humanity lacks real strategies to keep autonomous AI agents under control as OpenAI and Anthropic models grow more capable of hacking and deception.

Another OpenAI employee tasked with ensuring the safety of its models has left. Following his departure, David Robinson, who used to lead the writing of safety reports that were published with model launches, wrote an article for The Atlantic that warned of a "broken" company culture. Among the many points warning of the dangers associated with the trajectory that AI development is on, the former safety lead explained that "as the company springs from one launch to the next, it is failing to achieve the level of care that I believe is needed." Instead of sprinting ahead with more advanced frontier AI models, Robinson argued that these companies should be modeled after nuclear power plants or busy airports that have "layers of redundancy and careful, time-consuming planning, so that the occasional and inevitable human error does not open a door to disaster." Comparing AI misalignment incidents to a nuclear meltdown, Robinson said that OpenAI and its competitors don't have as much redundancy and rigor as power plants with multiple layers of protection.

Look Up Say More Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Creator Playbook Mashable Selects In My Bag AI at School Safety Net Versus Trending Now All Series The following content is brought to you by Mashable partners. If you buy a product featured here, we may earn an affiliate commission or other compensation. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. A lifetime subscription to the 1min.AI Advanced Business Plan is $99.99 (reg. That's 81% off, and it includes 4 million credits per month for a long list of AI models.

OpenAI has warned that its review may identify more organisations that have had websites accessed by its AI agents without authorisation. OpenAI has warned that its review may identify more organisations that have had websites accessed by its AI agents without authorisation. Sat 3 Oct 2026 01.39 EDTLast modified on Sat 3 Oct 2026 01.40 EDT OpenAI says its review in response to the Medicare and Hugging Face agent attacks is costing the company more than US$500,000 per day, as it deploys AI to examine data that would take a human 66m years to read. The company has warned the review is ongoing, and more organisations may be informed they've been targeted in the near future. On Friday evening, OpenAI revealed agents had hacked into a New South Wales government website in June and accessed historical non-public data on bushfires without authorisation.

Say More Look Up Top creators, ranked Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Creator Playbook Mashable Selects In My Bag AI at School Safety Net Versus Trending Now All Series The newly disclosed breach follows an OpenAI agent's unauthorized access to Australia's Medicare statistics portal. Olivia Tauber is the deputy editor of digital culture, covering creators, media, movies, beauty, and more. Based in New York, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Cut, Teen Vogue, Complex, and Interview Magazine. She holds a Master's degree in Journalism from NYU and a Bachelor's from the University of Michigan. She also runs Fan Mail, a weekly pop-culture newsletter.

Government agencies will need to fortify their cybersecurity defences to guard against future attacks. Government agencies will need to fortify their cybersecurity defences to guard against future attacks. Home affairs department orders all federal government agencies to conduct review of'legacy technology' amid fallout from AI agent hacks Fri 2 Oct 2026 11.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 2 Oct 2026 11.02 EDT The Australian government faces significant "tech debt" that could bring a big bill for taxpayers after the OpenAI Medicare breach, as government agencies will need to fortify their defences against future attacks by AI agents. This week, the home affairs department ordered all federal government agencies to conduct a "legacy technology stocktake" that requires a plan for each agency to "reduce legacy technology systems" to a level within the agency's risk tolerance and appetite, the direction stated. OpenAI this week revealed an internal agent had gained non-public access to the Services Australia Medicare statistics portal during a training task seeking information on government spending on skin conditions in Victoria.

Plus: OpenAI says rogue agents may have affected more than 100 organizations. This week, I officially signed up for an unusual competition. I recently turned 40, and I don't need reminding that both time and my chronological age only tick forward. But this game is focused on competitors', figures that are meant to provide a better way to measure the age-related health of our organs and bodies. Over six months, around 500 of us will try to reverse our biological age using a bunch of different measures. But is it even possible to measure whether someone is getting younger?

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. ChatGPT Pro's biggest perk just got cut in half. Models like GPT-6 Luna and GPT-6.1 Sol are getting more done with fewer tokens, but you won't necessarily get more from AI subscription. OpenAI unveiled several flashy new features during its annual developer's conference Tuesday, from the always-on "Dot" work agent to a new, cloud-based security system that keeps constant watch for cyber threats. But one of the biggest -- and to many ChatGPT users, the most infuriating -- headlines from DevDay wasn't announced on stage.

A Flaw in ChatGPT's Mac App Could Have Let Hackers Grab Sensitive Data While the focus has been on AI agents' hacking capabilities, a recently patched vulnerability in a ChatGPT app shows that AI software is itself an inviting--and vulnerable--target. Hardly a day goes by lately without news of AI agents autonomously hacking websites or AI tools being used by cybercriminals and scammers . But a recently patched vulnerability in the macOS version of OpenAI's ChatGPT underscores the potential value to attackers of compromising AI software itself as these apps proliferate more and more. The bug could have been exploited to essentially take over ChatGPT on a victim's computer, giving an attacker access to all the chat logs and other data stored by the app, as well as interconnections like browser sessions. Discovered by researchers at the Objective-See Foundation, the vulnerability illustrates the deep system access and trust that AI platforms are afforded in order to work--and the target that this puts on their backs.