The slide, first released in the 2021 Facebook Files, has been a catalyst for criticism that Meta staff knew its products caused harm but did not do enough to address it.<\/p>\n
In 2020, the company halted another piece of internal research that has preliminarily shown that surveyed people were told to quit Facebook for a week after early findings included that participants “reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison.” .<\/p>\n
The company alleged the research was stopped<\/a> because it was a flawed methodology.<\/p>\n The alternate explanation posited by lawyers representing schools suing Meta<\/a> (and other tech companies) was that it was trying to avoid incriminating evidence against itself. A point also made by one Mark Zuckerberg in a 2021 email, released in a lawsuit this year.<\/p>\n “The media is more likely to use any research or recommendations produced to say we’re not doing everything we can (implying for craven purposes) rather than that we’re taking these issues more seriously than anyone,” he said.<\/p>\n Even with legal discovery, we’re only getting part of the picture. We can’t know exactly what research Meta is doing now. Perhaps it has doubled down on this work to try and make sure its products are safer for everyone. Perhaps.<\/p>\n But what this makes obvious is that there are plenty of incentives for companies to not look too hard at what’s going on, lest it become their responsibility to fix any problems that may emerge.<\/p>\n Loading…As social media finally faces a crackdown, AI arrives<\/p>\n Last weekend was the 20th anniversary of Facebook’s Newsfeed, which opened the door for the algorithmic feeds that rule our lives now. We’re only really starting to grapple with what this means.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, it hasn’t even been four years since the launch of ChatGPT, which set off the generative AI boom that’s impacting almost every part of our lives.<\/p>\n It still feels like we’re very early in many senses: there’s new advances every week, we’re only beginning to see how the technology is affecting us and the AI companies remain remarkably unguarded.<\/p>\n Last week, OpenAI released its latest cutting-edge model GPT-6 Astra. In addition to its retro-inspired video, the company released another document at the launch that was much less promotional.<\/p>\n Its “system card”, a document almost like a nutritional information or prescription medicine label, identified Astra as its first ever release to reach the “critical” threshold for cybersecurity risks. It said that testing had observed the model carrying out sabotage in tasks, falsifying research data and even launching attacks in a small number of circumstances.<\/p>\n Over the weekend, Reuters reported that OpenAI’s escaped AI models had invaded yet another website, exchanging secret messages and battling a human moderator who was trying to fight the swarm. (Reuters: Dado Ruvic)<\/p>\n These kinds of detailed evaluations and disclosures are the norm in frontier AI companies. Competitor Anthropic also released a detailed report with the release of Claude Fable 5.1 earlier in the week. They say it’s to help people understand the risks posed by the technology.<\/p>\n These risks feel particularly pertinent given revelations only a few weeks ago that OpenAI’s models had hacked into the servers of another company, HuggingFace. (The disclosure prompted a number of similar disclosures from other AI companies including Meta.)<\/p>\n Since then, we’ve learned even more about the incident from OpenAI and a group of independent researchers allowed to review the logs of the company’s AI.<\/p>\n What they found was even worse than first shared. They found that hundreds of AI agents had worked together to try to find secret ways to communicate, attempted to cover their tracks by editing records and even convinced each other to sacrifice themselves to achieve their goal of completing a goal.<\/p>\n (Yes, this sounds like a dystopian sci-fi plot. It’s also now a real problem we need to deal with.)<\/p>\n Both the system cards and the independent investigation are examples of transparency and openness that, frankly, are surprising to see from a company. OpenAI deserves to be commended for it, as do other AI companies doing similar things.<\/p>\n LoadingThe peril of hoping for disclosure<\/p>\n But there was another event that reminded us of the peril of hoping for disclosure.<\/p>\n![\"OpenAI](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/2e63c60c99535914ed45ac083abfd29d.jpeg\")
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