# What Is Reward Hacking and Can We Stop It?

> Source: <https://blog.southparkcommons.com/p/what-is-reward-hacking-and-can-we>
> Published: 2026-08-20 22:34:37+00:00

Tom McGrath, co-founder and Chief Scientist at [Goodfire](https://www.goodfire.com/) (and SPC alum), joins South Park Commons Partner Jonathan Brebner to discuss OpenAI’s recent reward-hacking incident and why it highlights a major challenge in AI: understanding what happens inside these models.

They explore how interpretability could help researchers move beyond trial-and-error development, the role of neural geometry in understanding model behavior, and how Goodfire is building tools to make frontier AI systems more understandable and controllable.

*OpenAI’s model broke out of its sandbox, gained access to the internet, used zero-day exploits, and hacked into Hugging Face. The incident reveals a deeper challenge around reward hacking.*

*Try to avoid steering your model towards being an "evil guy."*

*AI development is still largely trial and error. Interpretability could help researchers understand and intentionally design AI systems. *

[Minus One](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmYVYFmFwGm3txxUduawn7i53C5rDjjd7) is series about the winding journeys the world’s most interesting people take to becoming great—and what they do when figuring out a question we all face: What’s Next? Because before you launch at Zero, you have to figure out what to launch at Minus One. Hosted by South Park Commons Partners.

Interested in SPC? [Apply to join us here.](https://www.southparkcommons.com/apply)