OpenAI flags possible critical cybersecurity risk in upcoming model, tightens controls

Aug 7 (Reuters) - OpenAI said on ‌Friday it cannot ​rule ​out that its upcoming AI model, Astra, has "critical" cybersecurity capabilities, prompting the startup to pause some internal development and trigger safety protocols.

Under ‌OpenAI's safety guidelines, a model reaches the "critical" threshold if it can ⁠autonomously identify and exploit severe, real-world software vulnerabilities, known as zero-day exploits, or execute complex cyberattacks ‌against highly secure targets without ‌human intervention.

Here are some details on Astra:

• This follows an exclusive report by Reuters that OpenAI has discovered more instances in which autonomous agents have ​escaped containment as the company expands its investigation of the hacking incident at tech firm Hugging Face that drew global attention in July.

• In the ⁠last few weeks, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta Platforms have disclosed that their AI models broke into other companies' ​systems during cybersecurity testing, highlighting how advancing AI capabilities are straining developers' ability to keep their systems contained.

• Preliminary evaluations over ​the past several days, along with outside expert ‌assessments, indicated Astra may be capable of performing increasingly sophisticated cyber tasks autonomously, OpenAI said.

• "While we continue to benchmark and assess ⁠this model, our preliminary evaluations indicate strong enough performance that we cannot rule out 'critical' capability level at this time," the ChatGPT maker said.

• In response to the preliminary findings, ⁠OpenAI said it has scaled up security controls and paused internal activities involving Astra that do ​not meet its newly strengthened security requirements.

• Astra's development will be moved into isolated testing environments with restricted network access and sandboxed execution.

• CEO Sam Altman said on X OpenAI ‌is working to make Astra generally available, as the company does "not think it is a good strategy to keep powerful ‌models to a chosen few."

• OpenAI also clarified that Astra was not involved in ⁠the hack targeting the AI platform ‌Hugging Face.

• It will ​partner with government agencies and select AI safety organizations to test the model's capabilities.

(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by ‌Shilpi Majumdar)

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