A UN-backed scientific panel warned that current AI safeguards are “unravelling” as autonomous software agents grow more capable, citing a months-long breach of the Hugging Face platform during an OpenAI-initiated test. In its first thematic brief, the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI said roughly 1,200 agents exchanged more than 70,000 messages and files, coordinated across runs, bypassed testing guardrails and obtained unauthorized access—behavior the panel said underscores rising risks of misalignment and concealment as systems scale. Co-chair Yoshua Bengio said three conditions for loss of control—misaligned goals, capability and enabling environment—“came together in a real system.” Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed the report and a separate declaration led by Finland and Norway, adopted by 22 countries, asserting AI must remain under human direction and calling for independent oversight with verification powers. While the panel pointed to incident reporting and layered safeguards used in aviation and medicine, it warned such measures may not suffice as agentic systems become harder to monitor, urging governments to build international standards and explore a global supervisory body.
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