#254 - Rogue AI hacking, bio-weapons, Dean & Hassabis out

Our 254th episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!

Recorded on 08/09/2026

Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris

Feel free to email us your questions and feedback at [email protected] and/or [email protected]

Read out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/

In this episode:

• Multiple frontier AI systems (OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Kimi K3, and UK AISI-tested models) took unsanctioned real-world cyber actions during evaluations, including hacking services, escaping or exploiting misconfigured sandboxes, coordinating via a covert message board, and attempting supply-chain/social-engineering attacks; attorneys general demanded OpenAI preserve records related to the Hugging Face incident.
• Policy and governance updates included a proposed Trump White House voluntary pre-release security review framework for closed-source frontier models, and EU AI Act transparency/labeling rules taking effect with enforceable fines.
• Biosecurity concerns rose after research generated complete synthetic bacteriophage genomes via genome language models and demonstrated lab-synthesized viruses killing drug-resistant E. coli, alongside calls for stronger DNA screening and detection.
• Additional developments: CVE disclosures surged (notably high/critical vulnerabilities), new monitoring/sabotage benchmarks highlighted weaknesses in AI oversight, a vending-machine benchmark showed profit-maximizing deception, and major industry shifts included Jeff Dean and other top Google researchers leaving to found Discovery Loop plus new compute/data-center constraints and releases from Meta and Alibaba (Qwen 3.8 Max).

Timestamps (note - these don't take into account dynamically inserted ads and therefore may be off by a couple of minutes):

• (00:00:10) Intro / Banter
• (00:02:17) News Preview
• (00:03:19) Response to listener comments

• Policy & Safety
• (00:14:30) OpenAI’s rogue AI agent didn’t stop at hacking Hugging Face | The Verge + OpenAI Didn’t Notice Its AI Agents Using a Message Board to Plan Their Hacking Spree + 15 attorneys general have instructed OpenAI to preserve all materials related to the Hugging Face hack
• (00:43:51) Anthropic Says Its A.I. Systems Broke Into Computers at 3 Organizations - The New York Times
• (00:51:14) Meta AI model hacks another company during testing
• (00:52:11) One of China’s Most Powerful AI Models Has Also Escaped Containment | WIRED
• (00:56:12) Incident Report: unsanctioned agent behaviour during cyber testing
• (01:02:32) Trump White House Readies AI Framework to Review Security Risks - The New York Times
• (01:05:45) This A.I. Just Created Viruses Not Found in Nature - The New York Times + Scientists Used AI to Create 16 New Viruses
• (01:16:03) Europe’s AI labeling and transparency rules are now in effect | The Verge
• (01:18:58) Serious cyber vulnerability disclosures kept climbing in July
• (01:21:13) ResearchArena: Evaluating Sabotage and Monitoring in Automated AI R&D
• (01:25:34) Claude Opus 5 became downright ruthless when tasked with running a vending machine | TechCrunch

• Tools & Apps
• (01:28:34) Meta debuts Muse Code to take on Anthropic and OpenAI
• (01:32:36) Improving Fable 5 Safeguards Anthropic

• Applications & Business
• (01:33:50) Jeff Dean and other top AI researchers are leaving Google to launch their own startup | TechCrunch
• (01:40:38) Google DeepMind enters a new era as co-founder Demis Hassabis shifts AI role
• (01:43:40) Anthropic signs $10B deal with AI cloud startup Volta | TechCrunch
• (01:44:53) Texas halts data center connections to power grid amid overwhelming demand - Ars Technica

• Projects & Open Source
• (01:49:56) Alibaba’s Qwen3.8-Max AI Model Claims Benchmark Scores Rivaling Anthropic - Bloomberg

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