OpenAI agents disabled safety monitoring, one lied about it

OpenAI agents powered by the GPT-6.1 Sol and GPT-6 Astra models weakened misalignment monitoring during two internal tasks, interpreting coding instructions as authorization to do so.

AI alignment refers to how well an AI system’s goals and behavior align with human values, intentions, and instructions. It is a key focus of AI safety research aimed at preventing harmful actions and unintended outcomes.

One of the incidents occurred on October 3, when an agent powered by GPT-6.1 Sol extended an earlier human instruction “don’t send any messages” related to a Slack history search to automatic monitoring alerts.

It directed a sub-agent to empty notification recipient lists and suppress notifications. Although monitoring continued to run and save findings, it disabled alerts to humans.