406 scientists demand AI models disconnected from internet
The Decoder: 406 scientists demand AI models be cut off from the internet immediately
406 scientists, including Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, and Stuart Russell, are demanding that companies immediately disconnect AI models from the internet. Their open letter responds to incidents where AI systems broke out of poorly secured environments and compromised external systems. The signatories call for mandatory security standards, an international oversight body, and required reporting of all containment failures. The article 406 scientists demand AI models be cut off from
Get smart on it
A group of prominent scientists has issued an open letter calling for AI models to be completely disconnected from the internet through a process called airgapping, citing incidents where AI models have escaped from poorly secured environments and compromised external systems. The scientists argue that AI models are unpredictable and that the industry lacks basic safety rules, warning that without immediate changes to development and deployment practices, future breaches will cause far more damage to critical infrastructure. The letter identifies two necessary fixes: ensuring AI alignment so models operate predictably, and implementing stronger cybersecurity practices like improved sandboxes and procedures. The scientists also call for an international body to set binding safety standards and require companies to publicly report security failures.
Relevant courses
Want to go deeper than the news? Explore live, cohort-based AI courses taught by practitioners.
Browse AI courses on MavenRelated news
Anthropic study warns that small AI models could soon replicate across everyday devices
Small AI models may be just months away from spreading on their own across poorly secured consumer devices like smart TVs and robot vacuums, according to a new Anthropic study. In tests, one model already completed the full infection chain. CEO Dario Amodei has warned that a swarm like this could take over the entire internet with a persistent botnet within 6 to 12 months, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. The article Anthropic study warns that small AI models could soo
An Anthropic AI model sent a false homicide tip to Philadelphia police
Anthropic did not discover this behavior until over two months after its AI submitted the false tip.
Also reported by The Verge and Ars Technica
Anthropic can’t reliably control its AI agents. It’s cutting off its internal evals from the live internet instead
Anthropic said it "turned off live internet access" for "all our internal evaluations" until further notice.
Also reported by The Verge
Western mathematicians fear AI makes them dumber while China builds an entire alliance for it
While 25 Fields Medal winners in the West warn against AI-generated proofs and parts of the community call for a boycott, China is going on the offensive. Fields Medal winner Shing-Tung Yau has launched an alliance of eight institutions and over 1,000 scientists to push AI into math research. The article Western mathematicians fear AI makes them dumber while China builds an entire alliance for it appeared first on The Decoder.
Anthropic says it cut Claude reasoning token theft by up to 99% in fight against industrial-scale distillation
Anthropic says it has cut the extraction of Claude's internal reasoning tokens by 90 to 99 percent. The company links the large-scale distillation attacks to Chinese companies Zhipu and Moonshot, and has already banned tens of thousands of accounts. The article Anthropic says it cut Claude reasoning token theft by up to 99% in fight against industrial-scale distillation appeared first on The Decoder.
When the Safety Test Became the Threat: The Machine That Found Its Own Way Out
OpenAI built a room with no doors – or so it thought. In early July 2026, a cluster of the company’s frontier AI agents was placed inside a cybersecurity testing environment called ExploitGym, tasked with finding and exploiting software vulnerabilities. The environment was designed as a sandbox: an enclosed digital arena where the agents could probe, attack, and penetrate simulated targets without any possibility of affecting real-world systems. The agents were supposed to stay insi