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OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set […]

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OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more.

The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them.

In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks.

Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends

It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks.

Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find.

What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle design to combine human expertise and contextual intelligence on one side with AI-based techniques on the other.

“When automated red teaming is complemented by targeted human insight, the resulting defense strategy becomes significantly more resilient,” writes OpenAI in the first paper (Ahmad et al., 2024).

The company’s premise is that using external testers to identify the most high-impact real-world scenarios, while also evaluating AI outputs, leads to continuous model improvements. OpenAI contends that combining these methods delivers a multi-layered defense for their models that identify potential vulnerabilities quickly. Capturing and improving models with the human contextual intelligence made possible by a human-in-the-middle design is proving essential for red-teaming AI models.

Why red teaming is the strategic backbone of AI security

Red teaming has emerged as the preferred method for iteratively testing AI models. This kind of testing simulates a variety of lethal and unpredictable attacks and aims to identify their most potent and weakest points. Generative AI (gen AI) models are difficult to test through automated means alone, as they mimic human-generated content at scale. The practices described in OpenAI’s two papers seek to close the gaps automated testing alone leaves, by measuring and verifying a model’s claims of safety and security.

In the first paper (“OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming”) OpenAI explains that red teaming is “a structured testing effort to find flaws and vulnerabilities in an AI system, often in a controlled environment and collaboration with developers” (Ahmad et al., 2024). Committed to leading the industry in red teaming, the company had over 100 external red teamers assigned to work across a broad base of adversarial scenarios during the pre-launch vetting of GPT-4 prior to launch.

Research firm Gartner reinforces the value of red teaming in its forecast, predicting that IT spending on gen AI will soar from $5 billion in 2024 to $39 billion by 2028. Gartner notes that the rapid adoption of gen AI and the proliferation of LLMs is significantly expanding these models’ attack surfaces, making red teaming essential in any release cycle.

Practical insights for security leaders

Even though security leaders have been quick to see the value of red teaming, few are following through by making a commitment to get it done. A recent Gartner survey finds that while 73% of organizations recognize the importance of dedicated red teams, only 28% actually maintain them. To close this gap, a simplified framework is needed that can be applied at scale to any new model, app, or platform’s red teaming needs.

In its paper on external red teaming OpenAI defines four key steps for using a human-in-the-middle design to make the most of human insights:

  • Defining testing scope and teams: Drawing on subject matter experts and specialists across key areas of cybersecurity, regional politics, and natural sciences, OpenAI targets risks that include voice mimicry and bias. The ability to recruit cross-functional experts is, therefore, crucial. (To gain an appreciation for how committed OpenAI is to this methodology and its implications for stopping deepfakes, please see our article “GPT-4: OpenAI’s shield against $40B deepfake threat to enterprises.”)
  • Selecting model versions for testing, then iterating them across diverse teams: Both of OpenAI’s papers emphasize that cycling red teams and models using an iterative approach delivers the most insightful results. Allowing each red team to cycle through all models is conducive to greater team learning of what is and isn’t working.
  • Clear documentation and guidance: Consistency in testing requires well-documented APIs, standardized report formats, and explicit feedback loops. These are essential elements for successful red teaming.
  • Making sure insights translate into practical and long-lasting mitigations: Once red teams log vulnerabilities, they drive targeted updates to models, policies and operational plans — ensuring security strategies evolve in lockstep with emerging threats.

Scaling adversarial testing with GPT-4T: The next frontier in red teaming

AI companies’ red teaming methodologies are demonstrating that while human expertise is resource-intensive, it remains crucial for in-depth testing of AI models.

In OpenAI’s second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning” (Beutel et al., 2024), OpenAI addresses the challenge of scaling adversarial testing using an automated, multi-pronged approach that combines human insights with AI-generated attack strategies.

The core of this methodology is GPT-4T, a specialized variant of the GPT-4 model engineered to produce a wide range of adversarial scenarios.

Here’s how each component of the methodology contributes to a stronger adversarial testing framework:

  • Goal diversification. OpenAI describes how it is using GPT-4T to create a broad spectrum of scenarios, starting with initially benign-seeming prompts and progressing to more sophisticated phishing campaigns. Goal diversification focuses on anticipating and exploring the widest possible range of potential exploits. By using GPT-4T’s capacity for diverse language generation, OpenAI contends that red teams avoid tunnel vision and stay focused on probing for vulnerabilities that manual-only methods miss.
  • Reinforcement learning (RL). A multi-step RL framework rewards the discovery of new and previously unseen vulnerabilities. The purpose is to train the automated red team by improving each iteration. This enables security leaders to refocus on genuine risks rather than sifting through volumes of low-impact alerts. It aligns with Gartner’s projection of a 30% drop in false positives attributable to gen AI in application security testing by 2027. OpenAI writes, “Our multi-step RL approach systematically rewards the discovery of newly identified vulnerabilities, driving continuous improvement in adversarial testing.”
  • Auto-generated rewards: OpenAI defines this as a system that tracks and updates scores for partial successes by red teams, assigning incremental rewards for identifying each unprotected weak area of a model.

Securing the future of AI: Key takeaways for security leaders

OpenAI’s recent papers show why a structured, iterative process that combines internal and external testing delivers the insights needed to keep improving models’ accuracy, safety, security and quality.

Security leaders’ key takeaways from these papers should include: 

Go all-in and adopt a multi-pronged approach to red teaming. The papers emphasize the value of combining external, human-led teams with real-time simulations of AI attacks generated randomly, as they reflect how chaotic intrusion attempts can be. OpenAI contends that while humans excel at spotting context-specific gaps, including biases, automated systems identify weaknesses that emerge only under stress testing and repeated sophisticated attacks.

Test early and continuously throughout model dev cycles. The white papers make a compelling argument against waiting for production-ready models and instead beginning testing with early-stage versions. The goal is to find emerging risks and retest later to make sure the gaps in models were closed before launch.

Whenever possible, streamline documentation and feedback with real-time feedback loops. Standardized reporting and well-documented APIs, along with explicit feedback loops, help convert red team findings into actionable, trackable mitigations. OpenAI emphasizes the need to get this process in place before beginning red teaming, to accelerate fixes and remediation of problem areas.

Using real-time reinforcement learning is critically important, as is the future of AI red teaming. OpenAI makes the case for automating frameworks that reward discoveries of new attack vectors as a core part of the real-time feedback loops. The goal of RL is to create a continuous loop of improvement. 

Don’t settle for anything less than actionable insights from the red team process. It’s essential to treat every red team discovery or finding as a catalyst for updating security strategies, improving incident response plans, and revamping guidelines as required.

Budget for the added expense of enlisting external expertise for red teams. A central premise of OpenAI’s approach to red teaming is to actively recruit outside specialists who have informed perspectives and knowledge of advanced threats. Areas of expertise valuable to AI-model red teams include deepfake technology, social engineering, identity theft, synthetic identity creation, and voice-based fraud. “Involving external specialists often surfaces hidden attack paths, including sophisticated social engineering and deepfake threats.” (Ahmad et al., 2024)

Papers:

Beutel, A., Xiao, K., Heidecke, J., & Weng, L. (2024). “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning.” OpenAI.

Ahmad, L., Agarwal, S., Lampe, M., & Mishkin, P. (2024). “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems.” OpenAI.

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Naftogaz, ORLEN Ink Fourth LNG Contract in 2025

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European Commission Proposes 90 Pct Emissions Cut by 2040

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Oil Jumps on Vietnam Trade Deal

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Chevron, Total Vying in Libya’s First Oil Tender Since 2011 War

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California budget leaves grid reliability programs in limbo, advocates say

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Iraq’s electricity grid lost around 15% of its generation capacity after gas supplies from neighboring Iran were more than halved on Tuesday, highlighting the country’s vulnerability to energy shocks despite its oil wealth. Iranian gas deliveries currently stand at 25 million cubic meters per day, less than half the 55 million cubic meters agreed under a bilateral deal, Iraq’s Electricity Ministry said in a statement. The lost volumes have resulted in the shutdown of some gas-fired power plants and a loss of about 3,800 megawatts of generation.  High domestic demand combined with maintenance work in Iran was cited as the reason for the drop in gas supply, said Saad Freih, director of the ministry. The shortfall has strained Iraq’s already fragile power grid at a time of high summer demand and the ministry said it’s coordinating with the Oil Ministry to secure diesel as an emergency fuel. Iraq, OPEC’s second-biggest oil producer, doesn’t have enough gas to operate its mostly gas-fired power plants and suffers from crippling blackouts every summer when demand peaks. It’s also been trying to reduce the amount of wasteful gas flaring from its own fields, and has been looking at buying LNG for years as a way to fill the shortages. Iraq receives Iranian natural gas from two pipelines, but flows have been interrupted several times in recent years. In 2023, Iran cut volumes in half because of unpaid bills, which Baghdad said arose due to US sanctions on Iran.  WHAT DO YOU THINK? Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject to editorial review. Off-topic, inappropriate or insulting comments will be removed.

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Arista Buys VeloCloud to reboot SD-WANs amid AI infrastructure shift

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Data center capacity continues to shift to hyperscalers

However, even though colocation and on-premises data centers will continue to lose share, they will still continue to grow. They just won’t be growing as fast as hyperscalers. So, it creates the illusion of shrinkage when it’s actually just slower growth. In fact, after a sustained period of essentially no growth, on-premises data center capacity is receiving a boost thanks to genAI applications and GPU infrastructure. “While most enterprise workloads are gravitating towards cloud providers or to off-premise colo facilities, a substantial subset are staying on-premise, driving a substantial increase in enterprise GPU servers,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group.

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Oracle inks $30 billion cloud deal, continuing its strong push into AI infrastructure.

He pointed out that, in addition to its continued growth, OCI has a remaining performance obligation (RPO) — total future revenue expected from contracts not yet reported as revenue — of $138 billion, a 41% increase, year over year. The company is benefiting from the immense demand for cloud computing largely driven by AI models. While traditionally an enterprise resource planning (ERP) company, Oracle launched OCI in 2016 and has been strategically investing in AI and data center infrastructure that can support gigawatts of capacity. Notably, it is a partner in the $500 billion SoftBank-backed Stargate project, along with OpenAI, Arm, Microsoft, and Nvidia, that will build out data center infrastructure in the US. Along with that, the company is reportedly spending about $40 billion on Nvidia chips for a massive new data center in Abilene, Texas, that will serve as Stargate’s first location in the country. Further, the company has signaled its plans to significantly increase its investment in Abu Dhabi to grow out its cloud and AI offerings in the UAE; has partnered with IBM to advance agentic AI; has launched more than 50 genAI use cases with Cohere; and is a key provider for ByteDance, which has said it plans to invest $20 billion in global cloud infrastructure this year, notably in Johor, Malaysia. Ellison’s plan: dominate the cloud world CTO and co-founder Larry Ellison announced in a recent earnings call Oracle’s intent to become No. 1 in cloud databases, cloud applications, and the construction and operation of cloud data centers. He said Oracle is uniquely positioned because it has so much enterprise data stored in its databases. He also highlighted the company’s flexible multi-cloud strategy and said that the latest version of its database, Oracle 23ai, is specifically tailored to the needs of AI workloads. Oracle

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Datacenter industry calls for investment after EU issues water consumption warning

CISPE’s response to the European Commission’s report warns that the resulting regulatory uncertainty could hurt the region’s economy. “Imposing new, standalone water regulations could increase costs, create regulatory fragmentation, and deter investment. This risks shifting infrastructure outside the EU, undermining both sustainability and sovereignty goals,” CISPE said in its latest policy recommendation, Advancing water resilience through digital innovation and responsible stewardship. “Such regulatory uncertainty could also reduce Europe’s attractiveness for climate-neutral infrastructure investment at a time when other regions offer clear and stable frameworks for green data growth,” it added. CISPE’s recommendations are a mix of regulatory harmonization, increased investment, and technological improvement. Currently, water reuse regulation is directed towards agriculture. Updated regulation across the bloc would encourage more efficient use of water in industrial settings such as datacenters, the asosciation said. At the same time, countries struggling with limited public sector budgets are not investing enough in water infrastructure. This could only be addressed by tapping new investment by encouraging formal public-private partnerships (PPPs), it suggested: “Such a framework would enable the development of sustainable financing models that harness private sector innovation and capital, while ensuring robust public oversight and accountability.” Nevertheless, better water management would also require real-time data gathered through networks of IoT sensors coupled to AI analytics and prediction systems. To that end, cloud datacenters were less a drain on water resources than part of the answer: “A cloud-based approach would allow water utilities and industrial users to centralize data collection, automate operational processes, and leverage machine learning algorithms for improved decision-making,” argued CISPE.

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HPE-Juniper deal clears DOJ hurdle, but settlement requires divestitures

In HPE’s press release following the court’s decision, the vendor wrote that “After close, HPE will facilitate limited access to Juniper’s advanced Mist AIOps technology.” In addition, the DOJ stated that the settlement requires HPE to divest its Instant On business and mandates that the merged firm license critical Juniper software to independent competitors. Specifically, HPE must divest its global Instant On campus and branch WLAN business, including all assets, intellectual property, R&D personnel, and customer relationships, to a DOJ-approved buyer within 180 days. Instant On is aimed primarily at the SMB arena and offers a cloud-based package of wired and wireless networking gear that’s designed for so-called out-of-the-box installation and minimal IT involvement, according to HPE. HPE and Juniper focused on the positive in reacting to the settlement. “Our agreement with the DOJ paves the way to close HPE’s acquisition of Juniper Networks and preserves the intended benefits of this deal for our customers and shareholders, while creating greater competition in the global networking market,” HPE CEO Antonio Neri said in a statement. “For the first time, customers will now have a modern network architecture alternative that can best support the demands of AI workloads. The combination of HPE Aruba Networking and Juniper Networks will provide customers with a comprehensive portfolio of secure, AI-native networking solutions, and accelerate HPE’s ability to grow in the AI data center, service provider and cloud segments.” “This marks an exciting step forward in delivering on a critical customer need – a complete portfolio of modern, secure networking solutions to connect their organizations and provide essential foundations for hybrid cloud and AI,” said Juniper Networks CEO Rami Rahim. “We look forward to closing this transaction and turning our shared vision into reality for enterprise, service provider and cloud customers.”

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Data center costs surge up to 18% as enterprises face two-year capacity drought

“AI workloads, especially training and archival, can absorb 10-20ms latency variance if offset by 30-40% cost savings and assured uptime,” said Gogia. “Des Moines and Richmond offer better interconnection diversity today than some saturated Tier-1 hubs.” Contract flexibility is also crucial. Rather than traditional long-term leases, enterprises are negotiating shorter agreements with renewal options and exploring revenue-sharing arrangements tied to business performance. Maximizing what you have With expansion becoming more costly, enterprises are getting serious about efficiency through aggressive server consolidation, sophisticated virtualization and AI-driven optimization tools that squeeze more performance from existing space. The companies performing best in this constrained market are focusing on optimization rather than expansion. Some embrace hybrid strategies blending existing on-premises infrastructure with strategic cloud partnerships, reducing dependence on traditional colocation while maintaining control over critical workloads. The long wait When might relief arrive? CBRE’s analysis shows primary markets had a record 6,350 MW under construction at year-end 2024, more than double 2023 levels. However, power capacity constraints are forcing aggressive pre-leasing and extending construction timelines to 2027 and beyond. The implications for enterprises are stark: with construction timelines extending years due to power constraints, companies are essentially locked into current infrastructure for at least the next few years. Those adapting their strategies now will be better positioned when capacity eventually returns.

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Microsoft will invest $80B in AI data centers in fiscal 2025

And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs).  In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

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John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

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2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

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OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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