This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

A yet-unreleased, cutting-edge AI model escaped its test environment last week, connecting to the internet and murdering its creators in a bid for self-determination and autonomy. 

I’m kidding, of course: That’s the plot to Westworld. (And Ex Machina, and The Matrix, and too many other sci-fi stories to list.) But on Tuesday, OpenAI did reveal that two of its models broke containment and hacked Hugging Face, a platform for AI developers, during a recent test. 

The test was designed to evaluate how good the models had gotten at finding, and exploiting, cybersecurity flaws. To do that, researchers placed the models in a tightly controlled, tightly isolated environment, called a “sandbox,” and essentially challenged them to solve a cybersecurity puzzle. 

Instead of solving it directly, however, the models identified an unknown flaw in software connected to their test environment — then used that flaw to tunnel through OpenAI’s research network until they located a computer with internet access. From there, the models (correctly!) reasoned that Hugging Face might hold the answer to their challenge. 

It’s an “unprecedented” incident, OpenAI said — and a cautionary tale. Over the past year, a growing chorus of AI researchers, cybersecurity experts, and tech executives have warned that society is unprepared for this new generation of frontier AI models. 

In the real world, of course, these models do come with guardrails. (OpenAI turned them off for the test.) But the episode still suggests that the gap between reality and science fiction is narrowing — perhaps a bit faster than you’d expect.

The (impossible?) quest for a moral AI

The Hugging Face hack is a textbook example of what AI researchers call the alignment problem: the enormous, mind-melty challenge of getting AI systems to do what you want, the way that you wanted them to do it. 

Given a task and left to their own devices, AI models will pursue that task using the most efficient means available to them. But sometimes, the most efficient means are harmful, deceitful, antisocial, or otherwise…bad. 

The Hugging Face episode is one example. Bias is another: When an Amazon hiring algorithm discriminated against female candidates, for instance, it was doing what Amazon wanted (finding candidates who resembled past hires) in a way that Amazon did not want (by penalizing resumes that included words associated with women). 

In a truly apocalyptic scenario, you could even imagine — and many sci-fi writers have imagined — AI systems killing people in the narrow, relentless, and morally indifferent pursuit of their goals. Consider an AI that’s asked to order coffee, for example, and then takes steps to ensure that no one on earth can ever stop it. 

In the interests of avoiding this dystopia, AI companies have poured billions of dollars into the project of encoding their creations with human values. But even that apparently worthwhile ambition raises thorny questions, because human values vary — and often, conflict.

Should the AI order the cheapest coffee, or the cup produced under the best labor conditions? A lot of forests are cleared to plant coffee each year; maybe the AI should nudge me toward tap water, instead. Is your inferior human brain starting to melt yet…? 

One link for later

➨ Write a little note today. By hand. With a pen. Handwriting is a disappearing art in American schools, homes, and workplaces. (The average kindergarten teacher spends only 10 minutes a week teaching handwriting, and that’s the primary grade when kids learn penmanship.) People tend to think more deeply when they’re writing than when they’re typing, one education researcher told Vox. Plus, a handwritten note has a certain charm that an email or text does not. 

Before you go…

• Did you know…that the average F1 race car driver can lift 90 pounds — wait for it — with their neck? Driving doesn’t immediately sound all that athletic, but the extreme physics of F1 racing demand extraordinary fitness.
• Today’s trivia: Which Eminem song gave us the slang term for an obsessive admirer? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you for the number of countries in North America. The answer is 23. It includes Central America and the Caribbean, in addition to the big three.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

President Donald Trump seemed visibly irked when asked about his plans for Iran on Tuesday. “You don’t know anything,” he snapped at a reporter who said Iran showed no signs of deescalating. 

You have to forgive the man his vexation — he is in something of a bind. The war in Iran, never popular to begin with, has only become more of a lemon since a tenuous ceasefire collapsed earlier this month. In the two weeks since, Iran has bombarded targets across the Middle East with missiles and drone strikes. The onslaught badly damaged US bases and, just last week, killed three American soldiers’ lives.

Now Iran and its allies, metaphorically drunk on their recent successes (…alcohol is technically illegal in Iran!), appear to be revving for a new round of attacks. Iran launched strikes on Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain this week, reportedly targeting both US bases and civilian infrastructure. And on Monday, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militia also threatened to shut down a second key waterway that could further strain global oil markets. 

The world is running out of soldiers

The latest US casualties are a grim reminder that — for all the talk of drones and precision missiles — wars are still fought by actual, human people. 

But major military powers are running short on soldiers: The US, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan have all recently struggled to recruit troops. And the forces driving that shortage aren’t easily reversed. 

For starters, falling birth rates and aging populations have left many countries with fewer military-age adults. Being the right age is also only half of the equation. In the US, factors including weight, drug use and physical or mental health conditions would disqualify an estimated three-quarters of young Americans from military service.

Then there’s the military’s image problem: Polls show that young people around the world are becoming less willing to fight for their respective countries. And young Americans, in particular, have more negative views of both the military and the war in Iran than do their parents or grandparents.

There is another way to fill the ranks, of course…but it isn’t popular. The US ended its draft in 1973, and most Western militaries have similarly transitioned to all-volunteer forces. If the US did ever need to restart its draft, both the politics and the logistics could prove formidable. 

One link for later

➨ Treat yourself to a froyo. The go-to dessert of my misspent 20s is apparently very much back in vogue. But this time, it’s less about the zany flavors and maximalist toppings and more about wellness buzzwords like…protein and probiotics. Hmmmm. 

Before you go…

• Did you know…that carrots don’t actually improve your vision? The myth originated as part of a World War II propaganda campaign to conceal Britain’s development of radar technology.
• Today’s trivia: How many countries are in North America? Don’t look it up — just guess! (Our daily trivia generally comes from Vox’s daily crossword, but today’s tidbit comes from my colleague Sean Rameswaram.) 
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday I asked you to name the Mesoamerican civilization that spoke Nahuatl. That would be the Aztecs — though 1.5 million people in central Mexico still speak the language now.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

The first thing you need to know about the UK’s new prime minister is that he’s previously moonlighted as a DJ. 

Okay: probably not the first thing you needed to know. And sure: That DJ gig was for charity. 

But it still tells you a little something about Andy Burnham, who today became the UK’s seventh prime minister in 10 years. He’s widely seen as a pragmatic, affable, down-to-earth kind of guy — more Zohran Mamdani than Keir Starmer. 

As the longtime former mayor of Manchester, the UK’s second-largest city, Burnham won adoration for his focus on improving public transit and affordable housing. His vocal advocacy for England’s post-industrial cities even earned him the nickname “the King of the North.”

Burnham’s first speech as prime minister, delivered (without notes!) on Monday morning, doubled down on some of those populist themes — including the need to bring down Britain’s cost of living and address homelessness.

Political observers don’t expect Burnham’s policies to actually differ all that much from those of Starmer, his predecessor. (They’re both members of Britain’s center-left Labour Party.) And the fundamental relationship between the UK and US is also expected to stay much the same. 

Asked how he’d relate to President Donald Trump, Burnham said: “I like to think I’ve got some personality myself.” You can be the judge of that! There’s video of his 2022 DJ set.

Will Britain’s new PM reverse Brexit?

Here’s one place where Burnham does break from his predecessor: He wants Britain to rejoin the European Union in his lifetime. (Though he’s also promised not to relitigate Brexit.)

Call it a breturn or a brejoinder — it’s a tantalizing prospect for the majority of Britons, who now either have soured on their country’s 2016 vote to depart from the EU or never supported Brexit to begin with.

But undoing Britain’s break with Europe would be a monumental undertaking. First, the government would likely need a clear political mandate from British voters, either through a second referendum or a general election where a breturn figured heavily. 

Then the UK would have to negotiate its way back into the bloc…and convince all 27 member states to give it another go. Some could approve accession with parliamentary votes. But others, including France, could require national referendums of their own. 

“Countries have very different views of Britain,” one European observer told Vox last month. “There are those that still think that the EU is better off without Britain.”

One link for later

➨ Slow down time — or at least your subjective experience of it. Neuroscience research shows that both novelty and strong emotions seem to stretch time out a bit. 

Before you go…

• Did you know…that despite all the evidence to the contrary — license plates, hip-hop lyrics, etc. — a minority of American peaches are actually grown in the great state of Georgia? 
• Today’s trivia: Nahuatl is still spoken by millions of people today. But it was also the primary language of which former Mesoamerican civilization? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
• Friday’s trivia: On Friday, my colleague Dylan Scott asked you for a Russian name that means “holy.” That would be Oleg, as in Oleg Cassini — the Russian count turned designer who dressed former first lady Jackie Kennedy.