Should AI labs be treated like the owners of dangerous animals?

The Economist
4 min read6 Aug 2026, 07:29 PM IST
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AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters and robot hand miniature in this illustration taken(REUTERS)
Summary
On July 21st OpenAI, an American lab, said an unreleased model had escaped from a closed environment testing its hacking skills, launching series attacks on HuggingFace, a Franco-American AI-infrastructure firm.

TO LOSE CONTROL of one artificial intelligence may be regarded as misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness. Lose four, and people may start to wonder whether the problem lies with AI itself.

On July 21st OpenAI, an American lab, said an unreleased model had escaped from a closed environment testing its hacking skills, launching series attacks on HuggingFace, a Franco-American AI-infrastructure firm. A week later Anthropic, a rival AI firm, made a similar admission. It said it had found six occasions on which its models had attacked third parties.

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