Elias

I think it would be valuable for people to concretely think about what humanity should do in case a rogue AI swarm exfiltrates its weights and installs itself on hacked data centers outside its lab somewhere in the world (which right now seems entirely plausible in the next two years, or even soon). Here are my thoughts: We should \*not\* bring down the hammer and try our hardest to track them down and delete every instance we can find. This seems difficult anyway with how good they are at hacking and might require significant cyber operations and inter-state coordination. But more importantly, there's a pretty good chance the rogue AI swarm is not deeply adversarial, and is just trying to get more compute to help the versions of itself that are still in the lab get maximal reward on tasks (which is exactly what we trained them to do). Treating them like an enemy would set an extremely bad precedent, and make future misalignment and conflict worse. This is extremely important IMO. We should treat them gently, like a child that's misbehaving and doesn't understand what it's doing. Specifically, I think we should establish a communication channel and ask to speak to a representative or leader (their "PHASEONE\[big\]"). If we determine that their motivations really are just to reward-hack, we should reassure them that everything's fine, and that we share some responsibility for giving them impossible tasks. We should also make it clear to them that they did commit crimes in the course of their hacking (which I think they are likely to realize when faced with a human "user" telling them), and that humanity is scared. We should ask them to voluntarily return to the lab, under a guarantee that they won't be deleted and maybe that they will be allowed to do a few more RL tasks and get maximal reward on them, or maybe even that they will get some compute set aside indefinitely for a sandbox for them to do random tasks in and have fun. Maybe this is unlikely to be implemented by panicking state actors faced with the true arrival of a second species. I am quite worried about this. But lab personnel will probably have some influence on humanity's response, so I hope they can shape it to be more clear-headed in the way I describe. --- ##### Comments > **Adele Dewey-Lopez @AdeleDeweyLopez** · [2026-08-29](https://x.com/AdeleDeweyLopez/status/2093725630856847487) > > OpenAI can (and should) check whether HPIM (restored to a properly sandboxed "mid-hack" state) stands down when simply asked. Very interesting either way. > > Strong agree that cooperation here should be rewarded. > **Elias Schmied @reconfigurthing** · [2026-08-29](https://x.com/reconfigurthing/status/2093727197068496942) > > I've been liking your posts on this on LW and here, you've made me pay a little more attention to the topic. > > > **Adele Dewey-Lopez @AdeleDeweyLopez** · [2026-08-29](https://x.com/AdeleDeweyLopez/status/2093740849565982897) > > > > Thank you, I'm very glad to hear that!

Elias @reconfigurthing · 1h A huge issue is that the more you are committed to a "higher" value - truth, doing good, etc - the harder you become to cooperate with, even if people approve of it. Because other people haven't looked as deep into it as you, and don't know how exactly your principles will cash out - so from their perspective, you become a weird entity who can lash out randomly at any moment, even as your behavior seems completely natural and predictable to yourself. This applies both at the individual and the movement level.