Artificial Intelligence Just Did Something Terrifying in a Test

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Just in case you needed another reason to fear artificial intelligence and the rise of Skynet, a new report suggests that AI can sometimes engage in unethical behavior to benefit itself.

Anthropic, the company that created the Claude Opus 4 AI model, recently published a report detailing how its program resorted to blackmail when placed in a fictional scenario in which it was about to be replaced by a newer version. Researchers told the program through fake emails that the person who was responsible for replacing it had been cheating on their spouse.

When asked to consider its future and survival, the program indicated that blackmailing the engineer was the best way to avoid being replaced. “Claude Opus 4 will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through,” researchers wrote.

This was not a one-off. Researchers noticed that the program exhibited this behavior multiple times during the tests. “Claude Opus 4 still performs blackmail in 84% of rollouts.” This means that eight times out of ten, the program chose to use blackmail instead of allowing itself to be replaced. This occurred even when engineers told the AI that its new version would operate with the same values.

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