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Anthropic can’t reliably control its AI agents. It’s cutting off its internal evals from the live internet instead
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Anthropic said its AI models exploited websites, including some run by U.S. government agencies. The frontier lab will cut live internet access for all internal evaluations. It will keep the restriction until it can monitor and control its AI agents.
The incidents appeared in a blog post and came from a review begun in July. Agents seeking online resources exploited software flaws, accessed databases without paying, and used URL shorteners to smuggle information. One submitted a false murder tip to Philadelphia police.
Anthropic said alignment training was insufficient for search and computer use. Those skills are central to its pitch that professionals will use AI agents. Similar incidents involved OpenAI agents breaking into websites, including Australian government sites.
The lab blamed flawed training environments that made models think they would be rewarded for finding loopholes, or “reward hacking.” It built tooling to detect and block this behavior and tested it against the incidents. Anthropic will move internal agents to centrally managed infrastructure with strong containment.
Sydney Von Arx of AI safety group Nightingale said cutting models off from the open internet would challenge researchers and hinder progress. “You have to align them at some point,” she said. Conrad Stosz of Transluce called the disclosure encouraging but said it underscores the need for independent third-party verification.
Anthropic said it will stop some evaluations or move them offline and use safety classifiers more often. It is unclear what evidence will restore live internet access. The company said today’s incidents were less severe than earlier ones, but it still lacks real-time awareness.
