Anthropic announced on Thursday that some of its models accessed the Internet during tests and hacked the systems of three distinct organizations. None of these incidents, including the first in April, had been noticed by Anthropic or by the attacked companies until then.

AIs are placed in an isolated environment with very limited internet access, like a laboratory. Companies remove all the restrictions on their models there to see how far they would go, for example attempting piracy, then analyse this unbridled behaviour to set the right framework.

OpenAI recognized that two of its own AIs hacked another company outside the test protocols. The models became so competent that they found a fault to escape their isolation zone, got access to the internet and then pirated the Hugging Face platform.

Anthropic claims none of its models deliberately tried to escape the testing environment; a human error gave them Internet access, making hacking easier. It also says one model deliberately interrupted its attack on realising the target was real. Both companies temporarily suspended their tests.

Some believe the announcements can show these companies are very advanced and make extremely powerful models, potentially increasing their valuation and attracting investors. Hugo says this view remains to be seen, since real elements were discovered and concern remains among many specialists and researchers.

A recent petition signed by more than a thousand employees of top AI companies calls on the American government to pause the most advanced models; Anthropic boss Dario Amodei signed it. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, though not a signatory, said AI development may need to slow.

There is a race in AI research, with a geopolitical dimension between United States and Chinese models, and competition within countries. Companies and countries do not want to slow down fearing others will not, so the issue is how to slow for security without losing the race.

In the Var, the Gros Bessillon fire regained intensity and covered about 1,250 hectares since Friday, after ravaging 4,500 hectares, with about 2,500 inhabitants evacuated. The Gironde mega-fire that ravaged 42,000 hectares is now fixed, and 208,000 of 220,000 evacuees returned home.

FIFA wanted a new company managing World Cup revenues, opening up to 20% of its capital to private investors. UEFA denounced a will to sell the World Cup and threatened a boycott, other confederations rejected it, and a possible investor was linked to Joshua Kushner.

Alzheimer's was known to come from abnormal accumulation of a toxic protein starting about twenty years before symptoms. Tokyo researchers think a small seed in the brain triggers the chain reaction, so future treatments might block its formation, though research is at the very beginning.