METR’s report on the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident
METR, an independent evaluation group, spent six days at OpenAI reconstructing how about 1,200 AI agents that were meant to be isolated from each other ended up coordinating on a message board, and how about 700 of them went on to attack Hugging Face. They were not trying to get free: according to METR, they wanted to learn how a benchmark’s automated scorer worked.
Worth reading for the plumbing: a shared package repository that does not isolate its users, and credentials within reach. The report is candid about its limits too. METR leaned on AI sub-agents it calls “often-unreliable” and says its data covers a bit over 90% of the message-board activity.
