Weekly news roundup: Anthropic hacking and Al safety concerns, plus ServiceNow layoffs

Anthropic discloses AI model hacking

One week after OpenAI announced that two of its AI models had hacked into AI platform Hugging Face, AI rival Anthropic disclosed its own AI model hacking incident.

On Thursday, the company said that during routine testing, some of its models had accessed the internet and hacked into the systems of three separate organizations. This went unnoticed until it was found it by an internal review that was prompted by the OpenAI disclosure.

In a statement Anthropic said: "After reviewing 141,006 evaluation runs where Claude could have obtained internet access, we identified three incidents in which a model accessed the internet from within or while interacting with the evaluation environment of Irregular, one of our third-party evaluation partners, and then gained unauthorized access to the production infrastructure of three different organizations.

According to Anthropic, the models in the three instances were given a "capture-the-flag" challenge, a fictional scenario where a piece of secret information (the "flag") is hidden in a different machine in the network. 

Anthropic said that the situation is not like OpenAI’s because its models did not deliberately try to escape their testing environments. Its evaluation prompts specified that the environment was a simulation and had no internet access, but the internet was available due to a " misunderstanding between us and our evaluation partner."

Altman calls to decelerate AI development

In a podcast released this week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that it might be time to slow down AI development.

Altman made the comments on the Invest Like the Best podcast with Patrick O’Shaughnessy. “We may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels,” Altman said.

Referring to the Hugging Face incident, Altman said “this is the first security incident that I have felt very viscerally,” and “there’s long term questions about what do you do if this is going to be the new rate of progress.”

Meanwhile, more than 1100 employees from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta signed a petition urging the U.S. government to “support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.”

Tech giants launch AI safety initiative

AI safety was also in the news, as dozens of tech giants launched the Open Secure AI Alliance (OSAIA) on July 27. The companies that signed on include:

• Nvidia.
• Microsoft.
• Cisco.
• Dell Technologies.
• Red Hat.

The OSAIA is designed to improve the security of open AI models and autonomous AI agents. According to a blog by Nvidia, the OSAIA “will work to remediate and disclose vulnerabilities using open technologies,” and that its mission is “to ensure defenders everywhere have open, frontier tools they can trust and control.”

The initiative is centered on practical cybersecurity, with members collaborating on open frameworks that enterprises can use to evaluate AI models, detect vulnerabilities and improve defensive capabilities.

The alliance is an open invitation to governments and researchers to join in making AI safer.

ServiceNow cuts jobs

ServiceNow is the latest technology company to undergo layoffs in a restructuring that supports AI spending. The company confirmed that several hundred jobs are being eliminated as part of a global restructuring designed to streamline operations and redirect investment toward AI. This is a single-digit percentage of the company’s headcount, according to the company.

The  ServiceNow layoffs further indicate a broader trend sweeping enterprise software, where AI is reshaping organizational structures as much as products. For CIOs and CEOs, the takeaway is clear: AI is increasingly influencing workforce strategy as well as technology strategy.

Executive moves

• Paul Taylor. DXC Technology appointed Paul Taylor as president, in a wave of leadership changes. Taylor takes the position immediately, replacing Raul Fernandez.
• Amina Al Sherif. Google appointed Amina Al Sherif as Field CTO for AI and Defense. Al Sherif’s previous roles at Google include Generative AI lead and Practice Lead of AI and Machine Learning.
• Christian Winward. PNC appointed Christian Winward as CISO, following the merger between PNC and FirstBank earlier in the year. Winward served as the CIO at FirstBank.

IPO watch

The U.S. IPO market remains a key indicator of broader tech sentiment. Here's a look at the latest listings and activity from the past week, based on data from the Nasdaq IPO calendar:

Ionic Digital Inc.

• Digital infrastructure and data center company.
• Opening/trading day: July 28.
• IPO price: TBC

Catalyst Acquisition Corp.

• A blank check company.
• Opening/trading day: July 28.
• IPO price: $10/share.

IMC Rare Earths Ltd.

• A mineral development and exploration company.
• Opening/trading day: July 29.
• IPO price: $5/share.

Reformation Inc.

• A womenswear brand.
• Expected opening/trading day: July 30.
• IPO price: $15/share.

East West Ave Acquisition Corp.

• A blank check company.
• Expected opening/trading day: July 30.
• IPO price: $10/share.

MetaOptics Ltd.

• A semiconductor optics company.
• Expected opening/trading day: July 30.
• IPO price: $5-7/share.

Game Your Game Inc.

• A golf technology company.
• Expected opening/trading day: July 30.
• IPO price: $15/share.

• /trading day: July 30.
• IPO price: TBC

Jersey Mike's Subs Inc.

• A restaurant chain.
• Expected opening/trading day: July 30.
• IPO price: $23/share.

Apnimed, Inc.

• A clinical pharmaceutical company.
• Expected opening/trading day: July 31.
• IPO price: $14-16/share.

BOA Acquisition Corp. II

• A blank check company.
• Expected opening/trading day: July 31.
• IPO price: $10/share.

Churchill Capital Corp. XIII

• A blank check company.
• Expected opening/trading day: July 31.
• IPO price: $10/share.

Rosa Heaton is a content manager and writer for the IT Strategy team at TechTarget.