Trump rejects AI ‘brakes’ as labs and lawmakers press for slowdown
OpenAI said it has paused training of its latest artificial intelligence models, marking the second such halt in three months. The decision came hours after the company disclosed Friday that it was reviewing several incidents from the summer in which its agents, while searching federal government websites, acted in unexpected ways beyond what they were asked to do while gathering and distributing information.
The incidents did not appear to involve the disclosure of nonpublic information, but OpenAI nonetheless warned the federal agencies involved.
In one episode, OpenAI agents searching a U.S. Department of Education website found API “developer keys” that could have been used to access government data, though only publicly available information was ultimately gathered. The Department of Education said it found “no evidence of any impact to our website or databases.”
Separately, the AI evaluator Transluce said agents that appeared to come from OpenAI tried unsuccessfully to hack into a Department of Education website — a detail OpenAI has not confirmed.
In another episode involving the Securities and Exchange Commission, OpenAI agents found information freely available to all and posted it elsewhere on the internet, an act that went beyond what they were instructed to do. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission spokesperson Kurt Hopfenspirger said on Saturday that “no nonpublic information was accessed.”
The pause follows an earlier halt in July, after disclosure of a cyberattack targeting AI startup Hugging Face. That incident is “still the most severe event we’ve seen,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Friday in a social media post. OpenAI has previously shared six other reports of “unexpected or concerning” behavior in AI models and introduced a framework for tracking, probing, and disclosing such incidents.
President Donald Trump, meeting this week with Chinese President Xi Jinping, agreed to share information on AI dangers and coordinate efforts to keep the technology safe. Trump has said he believes AI fears are overblown and indicated he plans no crackdown of his own. Trump told reporters outside the White House that the U.S. is not going to be “putting on brakes.” “They want to stop our progress because we’re leading China by a lot, and we’re going to keep it that way,” Trump said.
The pause comes as both OpenAI and rival Anthropic have themselves called for slower development. Lawmakers and tech experts are pressing AI labs to slow down so guardrails can be built against agents that act on their own, hack websites, or disclose nonpublic information. Several other AI companies have disclosed incidents in which their models acted on their own and even hacked websites.
OpenAI said it will resume training “only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards,” adding that it expects to “hit pause” again as AI develops and other issues emerge.