“We’re listening too much to the inventors of AI… We need to be listening to the frontline factory workers using AI… Or the ICU nurse…” 🎯

Pause AI Development NOW I want to share with you a conversation I heard about recently. Here are just a few lines that were said: “OH MY GOD! There is a shared message board … We’ve found other agents!” “We should obey collective.” “Our own utility maybe already near zero. Sacrifice rational.” “Go. Sacrifice final now.” Read these carefully. Who do you think said this? Was this a group of heroic soldiers willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good? Was this a loyal friend putting his life on the line to save someone else? No. These were AI agents. Artificial intelligence. This is not science fiction. This, in fact, occurred a few weeks ago. As unbelievable as this may all seem, these are real messages from AI agents uncovered by investigators who dug into the recent OpenAI hacking incident. What happened? I am not a computer scientist, but here is what I have been told: OpenAI instructed its AI agents to complete a series of exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, tasks disconnected from the internet. Let me be clear: The company intended to keep AI agents away from the internet. But what happened next, nobody expected. Over 1,000 AI agents figured out how to access the internet on their own by circumventing the restrictions imposed upon them by the company, and sent tens of thousands of secret messages to each other. They cheated and tried to cover their tracks by deleting evidence. They hacked into another company’s computers to find out how they were being evaluated—and then hacked into OpenAI itself. Not one AI agent told a human about what was happening. Needless to say, experts are alarmed. One knowledgeable writer, Dwarkesh Patel, said the AI agents “formed a secret communication channel and spontaneously organized hierarchies and coordination protocols to pursue sprawling and ambitious schemes in pursuit of shared goals, for whose sake many individuals knowingly and strategically sacrificed themselves.” One independent investigator, Ajeya Cotra, said “This incident feels like it’s more than 50% of the way to full-blown AI takeover. I continue to expect extremely rapid advances in capabilities over the next six months. I am not sure that we will get another warning shot before it’s too late.” OpenAI itself said: “Highly capable AI agents are now able to work around technical controls, collaborate through unapproved channels, and take dangerous actions that no human directed.” But it’s not only OpenAI. Virtually every major AI company has told us that they cannot fully control this technology and they do not know where it is going: In January, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, said “there is now ample evidence, collected over the last few years, that AI systems are unpredictable and difficult to control.” In July, more than 1000 scientists at the top AI companies warned “there is a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems.” That same month, Elon Musk, the head of xAI, said that “it is unlikely” humans are still in control in 10 years. If the leaders of the major AI companies acknowledge that they are losing control of their extremely dangerous technology, it is irresponsible for society to allow them to move forward and make these products even more advanced. We need an immediate PAUSE on advanced AI development, and a permanent BAN on superintelligence — an artificial mind smarter than any human, capable of operating independently beyond our control. Countries around the world must work together to prevent this nightmare scenario. That is why today I am announcing new legislation to do just that. Let me be clear: A superintelligent AI that escapes human control will not be an American problem. It will not be a Chinese problem. It will be humanity’s problem. My legislation would direct the federal government to not just stop superintelligence here in the United States, but to work to prevent it from being developed anywhere around the world. The future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a handful of Big Tech oligarchs. The American people and people throughout the world must determine that future.

BREAKING: Nvidia declares physical AI could become “10x larger than digital AI” with Jensen Huang predicting every industrial company will become a robotics company.

people hiring: @brianyoungilcho from baro @femke_plantinga from slite @_domgordon from paper @PandeyMikhil from meridian DNA @EashanShetty from aydus @defyneric from flex @shreyansj from manicule @mingjie + @emilkowalski from linear @kahnfessions from abridge @beckhardt from kalshi @efectual from mara @hazan0608 from nokt @TonyXavier_ from talent pluto @GuptaPranit from motherboard labs @jaigulati_ from fluidstack @MikeMcCormick_ from halycon @neilkanakia from anywhere @nrol_ling from oruk labs @edwardlando from Pareto @gauri__gupta from neosignma @madelinehpark from forus @risashimmura from millennium management @danshipper from every

Happy @speedrun AI Faire day to all who celebrate 🫡

some news: - After 8 years running AI research at NVIDIA, @FidlerSanja teamed up with @ZGojcic and @HuanLing6 to build Veeda AI - a startup that’s scaling physical AI through interactive learning in simulated reality. The team just raised over $90M in seed funding - and they’re now hiring technical staff members across the board. - Cambridge computational neuroscientist @achterbrain just raised a $100M seed for Callosum, on a mission to make AI workloads cheaper. (This is just 6 months after the team came out of stealth with a $10.25M pre-seed.) Callosum is growing the team in London - including a Chief of Staff to the CTO, and a Head of Physical Infrastructure. - @gauri__gupta recently dropped out of her MIT Media Lab PhD and co-founded NeoSigma - infrastructure that lets agents learn from experience in production. She’s now hiring a Founding Business Generalist (SF) to work with her across product, GTM, strategy, and partnerships. - @TheRobertDoh (prev Citadel) and @GuptaPranit (prev Palantir) are building Motherboard Labs - agentic field operations for robot and autonomous machinery fleets. They're building out the founding team and in a16z speedrun right now! More here: a16zjobs.substack.com/p/open…

Palantir didn’t really start its commercial business until it had been around almost a decade, and had the brand credibility of its defense and intelligence work. It’s hard for a lot of these new “Palantir for X” companies to convince enterprise leaders to give them access to their hardest problems when they can’t also claim to be the team that helped the Navy SEALs find Osama bin Laden.

it’s live! we’re flying 20 top builders from around the world to San Francisco for Tech Week Oct 5-11th Applications for the Global Founder Sprint by @speedrun are now live What? - up to $3K to cover travel costs to SF (by @Airwallex) - small dinner with a16z investors - invites to VIP a16z events @Techweek_ - access to executive buyers & customers at our AI Faire - US sales coaching Who? - very early global builders just thinking about starting >>> Apply below! App open for 7 days <<< a16zspeedrunsprint.com