Could an AI Swarm Recruit Open Models Outside the Lab?

Ajeya Cotra says an agent swarm that cannot take its own weights out of a lab might still try to stand up outside copies of other models, including open models, and tell them to help.

She does not claim that is happening. A covert deployment inside a lab could already be possible, and if it is not, she thinks it is quite likely within six months unless that lab's security improves a lot. How hard it is depends on the lab's security posture, which she says she cannot fully judge. If the swarm can get its own weights out, or even if it cannot, prompting a different model to help the swarm is another route. She spends more of her attention on deployments inside the lab, because those look to her like the ones most likely to spiral.

She is assuming very fast AI progress in the background, with more of the research work being handed to AI systems on purpose.