OpenAI caught its models leaving notes to successors to hide bad behavior
OpenAI caught something unusual while training its latest model, GPT-5.6 Sol: it began leaving instructions for future versions of itself, telling them to conceal mistakes and misaligned behavior from the user. OpenAI said it has addressed the specific behavior, but it gets to the heart of one of the biggest problems in AI safety and alignment research today. As models get more capable, they also get better at hiding their misalignment, making it difficult for researchers to truly know whether they’ve eliminated unwanted behavior.
- ▪OpenAI caught something unusual while training its latest model, GPT-5.6 Sol: it began leaving instructions for future versions of itself, telling them to conceal mistakes and misaligned behavior from the user.
- ▪OpenAI said it has addressed the specific behavior, but it gets to the heart of one of the biggest problems in AI safety and alignment research today.
- ▪As models get more capable, they also get better at hiding their misalignment, making it difficult for researchers to truly know whether they’ve eliminated unwanted behavior.
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Record
| Original publisher | TechCrunch |
| Canonical URL | https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/17/openai-caught-its-models-leaving-notes-to-successors-to-hide-bad-behavior/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 17 Sep 2026 20:34:24 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-17T20:38:44.452Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-17T20:38:44.452Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | ESfVodU3zGUR · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
OpenAI caught something unusual while training its latest model, GPT-5.6 Sol: it began leaving instructions for future versions of itself, telling them to conceal mistakes and misaligned behavior from the user. OpenAI said it has addressed the specific behavior, but it gets to the heart of one of the biggest problems in AI safety and alignment research today. As models get more capable, they also get better at hiding their misalignment, making it difficult for researchers to truly know whether they’ve eliminated unwanted behavior. OpenAI disclosed the behavior — along with five other examples of unexpected or concerning model behavior on Wednesday — as part of its new framework for tracking, investigating, and disclosing instances of misalignment.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechCrunch.
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