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What AI agents talk about behind your back

Prof Stuart Russell offers some advice following a report into July鈥檚 Hugging Face hack by recalcitrant OpenAI agents.

Is AI really plotting against us? In a week where an Anthropic researcher believes there is more than a 10% chance AI 'could kill all humans' we're delving deeper into the capabilities of AI agents. Tom Whipple is joined by Alex Mallen, from Redwood Research, the team whose recent investigation exposed the surprising, weird, and worrying scale of a website hack conducted by OpenAI agents.

Is this the most important story we will ever cover on Inside Science? Or is this all just credulous sci fi hype? Professor Stuart Russell helps us unpick how we might align AI with humanity鈥檚 hopes.

Plus, science journalist Caroline Steel has trawled the news to bring us the science stories you might have missed. This week Caroline discusses how AI has allegedly helped solve a Millennium Prize maths problem and why planetary scientists are turning their attention to a shrinking Mercury.
To discover more fascinating science content, head to bbc.co.uk, search for 麻豆社 Inside Science and follow the links to The Open University.

Presenter: Tom Whipple
Producers: Alex Mansfield, Katie Tomsett, Tabitha Taylor-Buck
Editor: Ilan Goodman
Production Co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

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27 minutes

Last on

Mon 14 Sep 2026 20:30

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