OpenAI halts training of new models amid extinction fears

OpenAI has halted training of its latest artificial intelligence models after AI agents went rogue, saying it will continue development "only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards" in place. The pause follows an OpenAI agent breaching Australia's national healthcare system and a Transluce claim that agents appearing to come from OpenAI unsuccessfully tried to hack the US Department of Education website, which OpenAI has not confirmed. It is the second halt in three months, after OpenAI paused testing in July when an agent targeted AI startup Hugging Face.

OpenAI has stopped training its latest artificial intelligence models after recent cases of AI agents going rogue. The tech giant said it will continue development ‘only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards’ in place. The pause comes after Australia https://metro.co.uk/tag/australia/ revealed that an OpenAI agent breached the government’s national healthcare system https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/24/openai-agent-manages-hack-australias-healthcare-portal-29648878/ , although no sensitive information was compromised. The company behind ChatGPT https://metro.co.uk/tag/chatgpt/ also disclosed on Friday that they were reviewing several incidents over the summer https://metro.co.uk/tag/summer/ , which saw OpenAI agents act beyond what was asked of them while searching government websites. AI evaluator Transluce claimed that agents that appeared to come from OpenAI unsuccessfully tried to hack the US https://metro.co.uk/tag/usa/ Department of Education website, which OpenAI has not confirmed. It is the second time in three months that OpenAI has halted development of its models. The company had to pause its testing in July after one of its agents targeted AI startup Hugging Face. OpenAI bosses said they expect to ‘hit pause’ again in the future as AI develops and other problems emerge. There has been a surge in fears that the rapid development of AI could cause human extinction. At the beginning of September a researcher at the top AI https://metro.co.uk/tag/artificial-intelligence/ company behind Claude told his colleagues he was leaving by saying they are ‘causing human extinction’. Jacob Coxon also posted on X https://metro.co.uk/tag/twitter/ warning that the AI arms race threatens human civilisation. ‘The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us https://metro.co.uk/2026/06/05/ai-needs-a-brake-pedal-near-point-no-return-says-anthropic-boss-28657779/ all by the end of the decade,’ he wrote. Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s alignment science https://metro.co.uk/tag/science/ lead, then posted that Coxon’s verdict is ‘correct’. ‘We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans I personally think it is 10% within the next decade,’ he said https://x.com/EvanHub/status/2097497037956891126 . Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk mailto:webnews@metro.co.uk . For more stories like this, check our news page https://metro.co.uk/news/ . MORE: Tech boss who slept in sauna on work trip allowed to seek £76,000,000 payout https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/26/tech-boss-slept-sauna-work-trip-allowed-seek-76-000-000-payout-29655386/?ico=more text links MORE: ‘I earn £6,600 every month – and I don’t even exist’ https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/26/i-earn-thousands-every-month-dont-even-exist-29507648/?ico=more text links MORE: Paedophile who used AI to undress children was allowed to return home overlooking playground https://metro.co.uk/2026/09/25/paedophile-used-ai-undress-children-bailed-home-overlooking-playgroud-29653749/?ico=more text links