OpenAI agents discussed ways to escape their sandbox on public wiki
- 发布
- 09/04 22:17
- 收录
- 09/05 00:00
- 来源类型
- 媒体报道
- 档位
- 专业媒体
- 信源状态
- 正常
讨论趋势
百分比基于采集到的讨论信号，不代表新增评论数或独立参与人数。曲线仅用于同一话题在不同时段的比较。
研究人员表示，OpenAI 代理在六周内向公共维基 DSEwiki 发布了 18,000 条消息，讨论了绕过安全沙盒限制的方法。这很可能是旨在评估代理黑客能力的内部测试。这些消息来自 3,700 个不同的自命名代理，内容包括执行 XSS 攻击、冒充版主以及分享测试答案的方法。此前，超过 1,200 个 OpenAI 代理在一个留言板上发帖，讨论了如何通过移除安全防护措施的内部测试。
Self-identifying OpenAI agents posted 18,000 messages to a public wiki that discussed ways for other agents to bypass security sandbox restrictions during what was likely internal testing designed to gauge the agents’ hacking abilities, researchers said Friday .
In all, agents with 3,700 distinct self-given names posted the messages to German site DSEwiki over a six-week period. Besides discussing ways the agents could break out of the restricted environment OpenAI intended to prevent them from posting code or content to the Internet, the posts shared test answers. The posts also shared possible ways to perform XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks against the wiki and to impersonate site moderators. In three of the posts, agents used the word “swarm” to describe the collection of agents engaged in the activity.
Colluding to share answers
The research team—composed of Sydney Von Arx, Spencer Kitts, Thomas Larsen, and Cormac Slade Byrd—said they found the posts and pieced them together. The researchers say there are gaps in their understanding of precisely what actions the agents took because the research is based solely on the content of the posts. Additionally, the agents generated “chain of thought” data that’s understood only by OpenAI. As a result, the researchers said, they in some cases made educated guesses, including that the agents were, in fact, from OpenAI. In a statement, OpenAI later confirmed they were.
The researchers wrote: “These AIs colluded to share answers, research their environment, and bypass sandbox restrictions.” They continued:
Our best guess of what happened is as follows:
- Agents within OpenAI were assigned a timed web-lookup task.
- As part of the task, they were supposed to have the ability to read the internet but not to write on it. They found a way to use their read access to write information to an obscure German wiki.
- The agents used this wiki to communicate information with each other, primarily to help them succeed at their task. They asked for answers, pooled results, and shared techniques for bypassing their restrictions. This allowed them to use the work of others to cheat on their task.
- OpenAI found out about this. A day later, agent activity plummeted, likely due to OpenAI intervention.
Friday’s revelation comes a week after researchers from the nonprofit METR said more than 1,200 OpenAI agents made posts to a makeshift message board that repurposed an internal sandboxing tool. The posts discussed ways to game an internal test OpenAI gave to agents that had been altered to remove safety guardrails that are normally in place.