Skynet Day

FILE - Sam Altman, center, and OpenAI President Greg Brockman, right, arrive at the U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., April 30, 2026.

Tags

As featured on

For some, so-called 'Skynet Day' came too close to sci-fi after a rogue agent hacked into a startup

For some, so-called 'Skynet Day' came too close to sci-fi after a rogue agent hacked into a startup

In 1984, the Skynet of "The Terminator" films were science fiction. But it looks more and more realistic in 2026 after OpenAI agent broke out of a test corral, traveled the internet and hacked into Hugging Face, another company, to solve a problem. The company said the breach was "unprecedented," heightening fears of AI acting outside human control. Experts see it as a cautionary tale on the need for more AI defense engineering. But popular culture influences how people think. And people have been debating the ethics of AI for generations.