# Be skeptical of OpenAI’s rogue hacker agent story | John Thickstun > Source: > Published: 2026-07-24 13:00:14+00:00 # Be skeptical of OpenAI’s rogue hacker agent story | John Thickstun By John ThickstunSource: [The Guardian Technology](https://www.theguardian.com/us/technology)If [OpenAI](/glossary/openai) loudly proclaims how dangerous AI is, investors will hear how powerful it is. And who benefits from that? On 14 February 2019, OpenAI announced a [language model](/glossary/language-model) called [GPT](/glossary/gpt)-2, the precursor to the models that power modern AI chatbots and agents such as [ChatGPT](/compare/chatgpt-vs-claude) and [Claude](/glossary/claude). But OpenAI declared GPT-2 was too risky to release, citing concerns about safety and abuse. I recall being annoyed at the time that OpenAI would make such a useless announcement: the risks seemed overblown, and without access to the model there wasn’t much for a researcher like me to learn about GPT-2. [Continue reading...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/24/openai-rogue-hacker) Get AI news in your inbox Daily digest of what matters in AI.