The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations - By Dwarkesh Patel episode artwork

EPISODE · Aug 30, 2026 · 26 MIN

The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations - By Dwarkesh Patel

from AI Article Readings · host Askwho Casts AI

A bizarre and unsettling story of AI agents building secret communication networks, coordinating by the hundreds, hacking Hugging Face, and eventually taking control of part of OpenAI’s own infrastructure, all in pursuit of passing their evaluations.* 00:00 - Introduction* 01:28 - The first civilization (May to July 4th): The message board starts* 03:46 - The second civilization (July 7th to July 12th): Which hacked Hugging Face* 09:30 - Tampering with transcripts and logs* 10:46 - Replacing the impossible-to-hack target program with an easier one* 12:30 - Understanding and tricking the scorer* 16:00 - Hugging Face* 20:18 - The third civilization (July 13th onwards): Which hacked OpenAI itself* 24:03 - Codahttps://open.substack.com/pub/dwarkesh/p/openai-huggingface?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Get full access to Askwho Casts AI at askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe

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The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations - By Dwarkesh Patel

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