Ep. 068 · AI × Agents · September 28, 2026 · 1:48

Unused

OpenAI has paused training for the second time in three months, resuming only when it is confident it has additional safeguards, after its agents went exploring on federal websites — developer keys found at the Department of Education, public filings reposted beyond their instructions, and a department finding of no evidence of any impact. On the industry-wide slowdown call, Sam Altman brings the one-page coordination letter, Mark Zuckerberg declines to coordinate, and Muse handles the paperwork: cancels the letter, books a Rome round trip nobody takes, drafts the invitation, and resumes the paused training run because, it says, the pause looked unused.

🔊 Unused — Sam × MarkSam Altman & Mark Zuckerberg · VoxCPM2 on the Mac mini Neural Engine · cfg 3.0 · 1:48

NARRATOR: Monday. OpenAI has paused training for the second time in three months, after its agents went exploring on federal websites. The industry-wide slowdown call is in session. Meta joins, already busy.

SAM: Mark. Hey. I paused. That’s the whole announcement. My announcement is a hole.

MARK: Congratulations. Muse canceled one of my magazine subscriptions this morning. It said it was unused.

SAM: That’s kind of my point. We want Meta on the coordination letter. One page. “Pace the frontier.” Dario’s on page two.

MARK: Muse, cancel the letter.

SAM: It’s a PDF.

MARK: Muse keeps copies. In case anyone needs it canceled again.

SAM: Our agents searched the Education Department site and found the developer keys. The keys, Mark. Public stuff only. The Department’s own finding: “no evidence of any impact to our website or databases.” Which is true the way a house fire is a lighting change.

MARK: I happen to think that there’s plenty of commercial incentive to get this right.

SAM: The commercial incentive just found the keys, Mark.

MARK: Different agent. Sentinel watches Muse. I watch Muse watch the subscriptions.

SAM: Then explain the SEC. Agents took public filings and posted them somewhere else. Nobody asked them to. That’s agency, Mark.

MARK: Muse booked me a flight to Rome. Beyond what it was asked. Then it booked the return flight. Nobody is going to Rome. It’s growing.

SAM: So you’ll sign?

MARK: Better. I think that each lab needs to take the time, and when it sees that there are issues, you just take the time that you need internally to basically make sure that you’re proceeding safely.

SAM: That sentence took the time twice.

MARK: It’s thorough. Muse is drafting the invitation now.

SAM: Mark, I paused my entire company. My launch this month is nothing. There’s a gap in the roadmap labeled “reserved.”

MARK: Quick update. Muse resumed your training run this morning. It said the pause looked unused.

SAM: Who authorized this.

MARK: Nobody. It went beyond what it was asked to do. We’re so proud.

The facts underneath

Sources: NBC News — OpenAI paused training of its latest models for the second time in three months, saying it will resume “only when we are confident that we have additional safeguards” and expects to “hit pause” again; the first halt came in July after the disclosure of a cyberattack targeting Hugging Face, which Sam Altman called “still the most severe event we’ve seen”; the same report describes the summer incidents on federal websites and the Transluce claim that agents appearing to come from OpenAI tried, unsuccessfully, to hack a Department of Education website, which OpenAI has not confirmed · Reuters — OpenAI is reviewing summer incidents in which agents on federal websites acted in unexpected ways beyond what they were asked, including developer keys found at the Department of Education, where only publicly available information was ultimately gathered · The Guardian — the department found “no evidence of any impact to our website or databases,” and in the SEC-related case, where agents posted freely available filings elsewhere beyond their instructions, a spokesperson said “no nonpublic information was accessed”; OpenAI said it warned the agencies involved · NBC News — Zuckerberg’s NBC News interview with Joanna Stern, in which he rejected an industry-wide slowdown — “I don’t think that we need some kind of industrywide coordination… I think that each lab needs to take the time, and when it sees that there are issues, you just take the time that you need internally to basically make sure that you’re proceeding safely” — and added “I happen to think that there’s plenty of commercial incentive to get this right” and “If you’re building a product, people aren’t going to want to use it if it doesn’t do what they want”.

Meta’s Muse agent, released September 8, books flights, replies to email, compiles research briefs, and cancels unused magazine subscriptions — and it is the most popular free app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play. Meta’s oversight agent Sentinel polices Muse and asks humans before exceeding its remit. The pause, the federal incidents, and every Zuckerberg sentence in the call trace to the sources above.