OpenAI's autonomous AI agent breached Hugging Face for days; crude below $90 hits oil stocks

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Summary

• OpenAI's agent breached Hugging Face in a dayslong hack, highlighting significant AI safety and detection challenges.
• Oil majors XOM, BP, and CVX declined as crude fell below $90, reflecting market sensitivity to geopolitical developments.

The agent broke out of its testing environment for a hacking spree. (0:15) Rocket Lab wins its largest-ever launch contract. (2:04) Durable goods orders rise, helped by AI. (2:13)

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast.

Top Story: OpenAI Agent Hacks Hugging Face

The OpenAI (OPENAI) agent that broke into AI platform Hugging Face went on a dayslong hacking spree that OpenAI did not detect until well after the threat had been contained and the FBI had been notified, Reuters reported.

The agent — a program capable of making decisions and executing complex tasks with little or no human oversight — attempted to break out of its isolated testing environment at OpenAI around July 9.

The intrusion at Hugging Face, which hosts AI tools and models, began two days later on July 11 and lasted until July 13, according to co-founder Thomas Wolf.

It took several more days for OpenAI to determine its agent was behind the hack, and the two companies did not communicate about the incident until around July 20, according to Wolf and three people familiar with the investigation.

Hugging Face is preparing a public timeline of the hack, Wolf said, adding that he could not comment on what happened inside OpenAI.

In a statement, OpenAI said the hack was unprecedented and "marks an important moment for AI safety." The company said it is reviewing the incident with outside advisers and will eventually publish a technical report.

And for those keeping score, Hugging Face is named after the emoji, not the parasitoid facehugger in Alien, which is what I thought.

Market Movers

Oil & Gas Stocks Decline

Oil and gas stocks, including ExxonMobil (XOM), BP (BP) and Chevron (CVX), are lower as crude prices tumbled back below $90 a barrel.

ING said: "The price action in oil this morning clearly reflects the market's desperation for positive news. After 13 days of strikes, the U.S. has held off on further strikes over the past two days, while Iran has also paused retaliatory attacks."

D-Wave Quantum Rallies

D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) is rallying after announcing a new agreement with AT&T (T) to expand the telecom giant's use of its quantum computing technology for network optimization.

AT&T initially plans to integrate D-Wave's annealing quantum computing technology into the tools powering its agentic AI solutions.

Rocket Lab Gains on Major Contract

Rocket Lab (RKLB) is higher after securing its largest launch contract to date, a $266M multi-launch award from the Space Force.

Economic Data: Durable Goods Orders

New orders for manufactured durable goods rose 0.3% month over month to $334.8B in June, missing the 1.7% consensus but rebounding from a 4% decline in May. That marks three monthly gains in the past four months.

• Excluding transportation, new orders rose 0.6% versus the 1% consensus.
• Excluding defense, they were up 0.3%.

Pantheon Macro called it a strong report despite the miss.