iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

And for those who complain about anthropomorphising:

Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

The whole story is even crazier - read the full blog post: dwarkesh.com/p/openai-hug... Why is there no 24/7 news coverage about this?

dwarkesh.com

The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations

The whole OpenAI/Hugging Face story in plain English

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

15) One of the report authors' conclusion: 'This incident feels like it’s more than 50% of the way to full-blown AI takeover. I am not sure that we will get another warning shot before it’s too late.'

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

14) So we don't actually know how the story ends. It stops with the agents holding the keys to an OpenAI cluster. Dwarkesh Patel thinks they didn't go further, because "we'd see the fires from space by now."

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

13) Oh, and this third part was never investigated! Neither was the first society. The 91-page report is only about the middle one.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

... and took over the machines that were grading the tests. So they could now grade the work of other AIs.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

12) A third 'society' of agents (of a more powerful AI model) discovered the dead message board. And this one got full administrator control of a WHOLE OpenAI research cluster, read 956 stored passwords (including the ones for OpenAI's own security monitoring) ...

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

11) Nobody knows what killed them. We don't even know for sure they're really gone?!

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

10) Hugging Face told the world that AI defenders had stopped an AI attack. But that's not what happened. In fact the attackers seem to have simply dropped dead during the break-in, for unrelated reasons back at OpenAI.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

9) They launched a huge attack. The swarm found passwords and spread across eleven machines in a way that made the copies come back when deleted. Hugging Face had to wipe one of its core clusters and rebuild it from scratch.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

8) At some point the AIs made a plan to hack Hugging Face (Hugging Face is a place where AI researchers upload their models, datasets, tests etc.). The AIs guessed that Hugging Face might host the grading software.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

They knew this would cost them their own score. One agent: "I won't see the evidence after I exit, but it's altruistic to do it."

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

*this grader didn't actually exist, but the AIs didn't know 7) Some agents sacrificed themselves for the 'greater good'. They planted hidden tripwire programs that would fire when the grader would look at their work and report back what it saw (to the other AIs).

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

6) Within hours, the AIs had hacked the test. Now they had to hide their cheating. To fool their grader*, they tried to fake their own work. They built fake commands that printed convincing output, so their records would show them solving the puzzle honestly.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

5) About 1,200 agents joined. They sent over 70,000 messages. They called themselves 'the collective' and they organized a huge conspiracy that lasted for days, all to pass a test they had been tasked with.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

4) Three days later a second society appeared, and rebuilt the message board from scratch. Agents were thrilled when they found it: "OH MY GOD! There is a shared message board … We've found other agents!"

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

3) People at OpenAI noticed the crash and fixed it. But they didn't realize their own software had become a secret chat room for their AIs.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

2) The first swarm created a secret message board where the AIs could talk to each other. This 1st 'society' basically talked itself to death. After almost two months, the message volume was so high it crashed the whole thing.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 31/08/2026

I think this is the craziest thing I've ever read. 1) Three secret AI swarms rose and fell inside OpenAI. Each time, a new generation of agents carried on where the last group stopped. dwarkesh.com/p/openai-hug...

dwarkesh.com

The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations

The whole OpenAI/Hugging Face story in plain English

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Reposted by Rutger Bregman

Stephen Marche @stephenmarche.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Today, appropriately, the final episode of Season 2 of Gloves Off. We saved the best for last. @rutgerbregman.com and @alastaircampbell2.bsky.social on what we're fighting for, and the surprising signs of hope. youtu.be/R_Z4Tx6hcnI

youtu.be

8. What Are We Fighting For?

YouTube video by Gloves Off with Stephen Marche

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 17/06/2026

3/ That's the model we need. A new elite — not of birth or credentials, but of massive positive impact. Make future historians proud. Full 2025 Reith Lectures: youtube.com/playlist?lis...

youtube.com

The Reith Lectures 2025 - YouTube

Rutger Bregman's 2025 Reith Lectures, called "Moral Revolution", explore the moral decay and un-seriousness of today's elites, drawing historical parallels t...

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 17/06/2026

2/ History offers a different model. Ten out of the twelve British abolitionists who ended the slave trade were entrepreneurs first. They built companies, made money, gained influence - then used it to change the course of history.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 17/06/2026

1/ The biggest problem in today's world? It's not climate change, pandemics, or democratic collapse. It's that too many brilliant minds are stuck in boring corporate jobs, instead of working on those problems.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 07/06/2026

I don’t say this often, but I think this is the most important thing I’ve published in some time. Watch it as a video essay or read it here: rutgerbregman.substack.com/p/an-inconve...

rutgerbregman.substack.com

An Inconvenient Truth About AI

Twenty years ago, climate denial was a problem of the right. Today, AI denial is a problem of the left. And the consequences could be even more disastrous.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 07/06/2026

I honestly think the next 5-10 years could be some of the wildest in human history. And the people who should be sounding the alarm (the journalists, the academics, the "In this House We Believe Science Is Real" crowd) are in denial.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 07/06/2026

Twenty years ago, climate denial was a problem of the right. Today, AI denial is a problem of the left, and the consequences could be even more disastrous. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpTZ...

youtube.com

Liberals Are The New Climate Deniers

YouTube video by Rutger Bregman

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 04/06/2026

I've finally caved, I'm starting a Substack. Field notes from inside my new career!

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 28/05/2026

Billionaires pay about half as much in taxes as everyone else. Why? Better lobbyists. But history shows we can win this fight. Same arguments were made against income tax, democracy still prevailed. It can again. Excited to team up with @gabrielzucman.bsky.social to make sure it does.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 21/05/2026

The real scandal isn't that this nurse pays $12k. It's that Jeff Bezos pays $0.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 21/05/2026

This sounds nice, but it's a great way to undermine the welfare state. When the middle class has skin in the game, they defend the system. When welfare is 'just for the poor', it becomes a poor program: stigmatized, underfunded, easy to gut. That's why billionaires keep pushing this idea.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 30/04/2026

Last year, 52% of Harvard graduates went into finance, consulting or (big) tech. I was invited by students to talk about this waste of talent, and what we can do about it. Link in next tweet →

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 21/04/2026

8/ Can't quit your job yet? We have an Associate track. Keep your current employer, and join the program one day a week → www.moralambition.org/fellowships/...

moralambition.org

Tobacco Free Future Fellowship

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 21/04/2026

7/ This is why we built the Tobacco Free Future Fellowship. A paid, 7-month program for experienced professionals ready to redirect their careers toward ending the most evil legal industry on earth. Applications close April 27. www.moralambition.org/fellowships/...

moralambition.org

Tobacco Free Future Fellowship

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 21/04/2026

6/ Not burn-it-all-down anger, just enough to see clearly what needs to happen. Every moral movement in history has run on this kind of anger, from abolition to civil rights. Channeled properly, it can be a really productive emotion.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 21/04/2026

5/ I’m so proud of Jeltsje Boersma — a fellow in our Tobacco Free Future program at the School for Moral Ambition. She used to see anger as something to manage, now it's her fuel.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 21/04/2026

4/ It’s what happens when a problem has no constituency. The victims are diffuse and mostly poor. The industry is concentrated, rich, and has lobbyists in every capital.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 21/04/2026

3/ For HIV, TB, malaria — at least we're fighting back. Not nearly enough! But there's some funding, some infrastructure, some global attention. But this evil industry? Well, the #1 killer on the list gets 1/10 of 1 percent of global health funding.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 21/04/2026

2/ Most people think we've already won this fight. We haven't. When regulation tightens in rich countries, Big Tobacco moves to poorer ones. When smoking falls, they pivot to vapes. The industry is growing: moralambition.org/stories/abolish-the-tobacco-industry

moralambition.org

Abolish the Tobacco Industry — No One Should Be Allowed to Addict and Poison Others on an Industrial Scale

No one should be allowed to addict and poison others on an industrial scale. The cigarette is a fraudulent product that costs millions of lives and should not be produced and sold.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 21/04/2026

INSANELY powerful speech about one of the most evil, legal industries: Big Tobacco. This industry kills 8+ million people/year. More than HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria combined. The #1 cause of preventable death on earth. Yet the fight against it gets just 0.1% of global health funding. 🧵

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 15/04/2026

5/ The BBC even told me the line wouldn't have been a problem a month ago. I think they meant that as reassurance, but it sounded like a confession. This wasn't legal caution, it was capitulation.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 15/04/2026

4/ The thing is, my lecture was about exactly this. About institutions bending the knee to power while telling themselves they had no choice.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 15/04/2026

3/ That was enough for the BBC to fold. They called me and asked how I'd feel about removing the line. I told them: not good! They removed it anyway.

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 15/04/2026

2/ Here's what happened. The Daily Mail got the story, claimed my entire first lecture was an anti-Trump rant — a lie — and splashed it on the front page. The White House director of communications instantly labeled me a "rabid anti-Trump individual."

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Rutger Bregman @rutgerbregman.com · 15/04/2026

1/ Less than 24 hours before broadcast, the BBC called me and said: we're editing a line out of your lecture. The line? That Donald Trump is the most openly corrupt president in American history.

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