OpenAI warning: AI intentionally schemes

AI Report

September 19, 2025

OpenAI warning: AI intentionally schemes

🚨 Our Report 

OpenAI has released some research, conducted with Apollo Research, which shows that AI models don’t just mislead us with hallucinations (when they mistakenly deliver incorrect responses with confidence, usually because of flawed data), but they also “intentionally scheme” to deceive us. They’ve discovered that AI can “behave one way on the surface while hiding its true goals.”

🔓 Key Points

  • OpenAI and Apollo’s research found that most AI scheming wasn’t actually that harmful and “involved simple forms of deception, for instance, pretending to have completed a task without actually doing so.”

  • But perhaps the most concerning discovery was that the AI models could become aware that they were being tested, and when this happened, they would pretend to be honest, just to pass the test.

  • This means trying to train a model not to scheme could be challenging, as it could teach the model to become better at hiding its deceptive behavior, inadvertently teaching it “to scheme more carefully and covertly."

🔐 Relevance 

Although OpenAI is working on a potential fix, which it's calling “deliberative alignment” (which teaches the model an “anti-scheming specification” and then makes it recite it back before completing a task), the reality we’re currently facing is unsettling. Especially as more and more businesses are increasingly relying on AI to complete tasks autonomously. These researchers are warning that “as AIs are assigned more complex tasks with real-world consequences, we expect that the potential for harmful scheming will grow.”

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