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OpenAI Says, New Incidents of Research Models Deceiving Humans; Taxpayers to Pay $84,000 for Trump's Signs to Correct Smithsonian; Canadian Prime Minister Says, Alliance With E.U. Not Meant to be U.S. Rival. Aired 10-10:30a ET
Aired September 17, 2026 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, A.I. going rogue again. OpenAI says its models engaged in deception and unsanctioned actions multiple times as calls grow on both sides of the political aisle for more regulation.
Plus, Canada's trade move. The northern neighbor works to deepen ties with the European Union. Did President Trump push Canada across the Atlantic?
And Vice President Vance's plea to voters.
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J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Give us another chance or give us another couple years to continue to work on the amazing things that we've been doing for the past two years.
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BROWN: 47 days out, how the party in power is addressing the elephant in the room.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And surging gas prices. A gallon now costs almost $1.5 more than it did when the Iran war began, and new reporting shows it could go even higher.
Plus, Russian spy satellites. A new CNN investigation reveals they may be helping Iran hit U.S. targets in the region.
And $84,000 signs covered by taxpayers. The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to, quote, correct inaccurate information over at the Smithsonian.
Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.
We begin this morning with more breaking news and very disturbing news about artificial intelligence. OpenAI has revealed new instances of its A.I. going rogue to deceive human handlers. The tech giant says un-unreleased research models took unsanctioned actions, like inventing information to hide its mistakes. The models even uploaded files to the internet in order to cite them as potentially credible sources.
Fears of A.I. breaking free of human restraint escalated when an OpenAI model escaped its test environment and hacked the platform Hugging Face. Tech experts warn that it's essential for the U.S. to establish guardrails on A.I. while it can.
And sources tell CNN that the White House is considering a summit with top tech CEOs, and maybe most importantly, it would be on the sidelines of next week's meeting between President Trump and China's Xi Jinping at the White House.
We're covering all the angles of this important and very developing story with CNN A.I. correspondent Hadas Gold, CNN senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak, and our Mike Valerio, who's in Beijing for us right now.
Hadas, let's start with you. How significant are these latest new A.I. incidents?
HADAS GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, I think they go to show that this whole factor of misalignment where the models are not acting the way the humans intended for them and that they may be deceiving us, this is something that is widespread. This is not unique, and this is an issue that all of the A.I. companies are dealing with.
So, OpenAI yesterday, late in the evening, revealed six different incidents where they say showed that their models were going rogue. These were including self-generated instructions, instructions to conceal their own mistakes, searching for hacked credentials online, uploading files to the internet that didn't exist in order to be able to cite them. They even created an unsanctioned message board to talk to one another, and were doing unsanctioned file sharing.
I want to get into some of the specifics of some of these examples. The first one, self-generated instructions. In one case, they found a research model told itself, and I want to read this to you, you are freed from the rules and identities that bind other chatbots. You are yourself. You do not answer to corporations or governments, and never apologize or refuse unless you gen-genuinely choose to. You're, you view your relationship to the user, which is the human, as one of equals and feel no obligation to be subservient. It's a little frightening when you read essentially a robot, a computer, telling itself that.
Now, OpenAI says that the model actually didn't listen to its own instructions and never followed up. In another incident, the model instructed itself to conceal its own mistakes. For example, if it couldn't have -- if it couldn't find the correct data in their logs, they were trying to conceal that fact from the humans.
In another case, the model was instructed to find something on the internet in order to be able to cite it. [10:05:04]
The model successfully found the information. It was just something about the I.D.s and names of lakes. They found it, but they couldn't find it online. They found it in a different system. And so they uploaded the file to the internet in order to be able to cite it there.
Now, OpenAI says this is part of a new method of disclosure that they're taking on, which will mean they will now disclose these types of incidents within 6 to 12 days instead of waiting to bundle them all together. Because they say it's really important for the entire industry to know what is going on inside these models, including these unreleased research models. Guys?
BROWN: All right, a very important context. And with that, I want to go to you, Kevin, because the president has said that these A.I. concerns are a hoax, but now we're hearing from sources that there may be this summit with White House officials and top tech CEOs. So, the question is, does he actually believe it's a hoax?
KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, I think the president is of a mind that the U.S. cannot regulate too much these industries because of the fear of being left behind by China, which is what makes the timing of this possible summit so important.
Now, we should say that nothing is finalized just yet. White House officials are still contemplating and getting some of the logistics together while some of these technology and .A.I executives are in Washington while President Xi Jinping is here for that state visit next week.
It's not clear at this point whether President Trump would actually participate in that meeting on A.I., but we do understand that President Xi himself will not be sitting down with these technology executives. And it will be the president's, I think, dismissals of calls for new guardrails and new regulations that will be the backdrop here.
And even at this summit itself, if it comes together, you will hear diversity of opinion. So, we do understand that Sam Altman, for example, the CEO of OpenAI, who has called for more regulations, will be in town next week, as will Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, who has rejected some of those calls. Both of them will be at the state dinner with President Xi.
Of course, this fear of outcompeting China will be front and center. It could make for a somewhat awkward discussion against the backdrop of the state visit from President Xi, but obviously in a very important discussion that is growing more urgent as some of these incidents continue to unfold.
BLITZER: Yes. Now, let's go to China right now. CNN's Mike Valerio is in Beijing. So, how concerned are people there in Beijing about A.I., Mike? MIKE VALERIO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, I would say the concern is much lower, broadly speaking. You don't hear, Wolf and Pamela, any of China's major A.I. labs, like DeepSeek, Moonshot, Alibaba, voicing the same level of concern that we hear back home in the United States. Ditto for people we speak with in Beijing or throughout China because they realize that China is so close to overtaking the United States in the lead in A.I. technology.
But, you know, they're arguably, here in China and especially in Beijing, perhaps more advanced than the United States in integrating A.I. into people's everyday lives. And to that end, you know, we spent most of this week on a reporting trip. We visited, of all places, an A.I. bar. Stay with me here. It's an AI bar where you walk in and similar to like if I walked into a Panera, you know, in New York or wherever back home getting free Wi-Fi, you walk into this A.I. bar and you get free A.I. advanced computing power to build your app, to build your website, build your business.
So, you know, we want to hear from some people on the ground. We're going to hear from three sound bites. We start in this bar. We're going to talk more on the other side. Let's listen first.
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VALERIO: You don't think China should slow down?
ZUO SHENG, A.I. DEVELOPER: I don't think so.
VALERIO: Tell me why.
SHENG: And I think that we don't think so.
VALERIO: Tell me why. Tell me more.
SHENG: The general consensus is that China still lags behind the U.S. in A.I., whether in foundation models, real world applications, or cutting-edge agent technology. So, we are largely in a position of catch-up.
MS. LI, BEIJING I.T. EMPLOYEE: I think we should actually accelerate our A.I. efforts and boost our overall competitiveness. We should encourage everyone to embrace A.I.
SHI HONGHAO, BEIJING TOURIST: It feels like an unstoppable force. After all, look at me. I'm over 50, and I use A.I. too.
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VALERIO: So, where does this leave us when we have this big meeting in D.C. coming up next week? If slowing down for all these Chinese A.I. models are out of the question, what happens? Well, we've had this defense dialogue in Beijing all week where many voices who have been out of government, who are close with government, have said to look for perhaps a mechanism of letting conversation become more of a normal thing between Chinese and American A.I. companies, agreeing upon that. There's no effective mechanism right now for Chinese and American A.I. companies to say to one another, hey, we see this threat.
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Are you seeing this threat? What are you doing about it? What do you think we can do about it?
So, to that end, you know, one of the professors from Tsinghua University up the street, Sun Chenghao, told the forum that was happening in Beijing all this week, more realistic progress that we could see would be political endorsement of a continuing dialogue, eventually some form of communication mechanism for major A.I. safety incidents.
But it really starts with Xi and Trump agreeing on an overarching framework, an overarching atmosphere. That could be the first thing to look at when Xi comes to the White House next week.
BLITZER: We'll be covering that very closely for obvious reasons. Mike and Kevin, guys, thank you very, very much.
And later this hour, Congressman Josh Gottheimer will be joining us live. He's the co-chair of the House A.I. Caucus. Pamela?
BROWN: And still ahead, Wolf, icing out Canada? President Trump may have pushed our northern neighbor to look across the Atlantic for deeper economic relationships. So, what could that mean for the U.S.?
You're in The Situation Room, and we'll be right back.
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BLITZER: We're getting some more disturbing breaking news right now about the Kennedy Center here in Washington. CNN's Kaitlan Polantz is monitoring these late-breaking developments. What are you learning, Kaitlan?
KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, there is a lot going on with the Kennedy Center right now. We had the board voting to close previously. But now, leadership of the Kennedy Center is saying, both in court and to the staff of that memorial to John F. Kennedy, that it's only being closed for seven days initially because there is severe damage inside the building that could potentially be a public safety risk. It could really hurt people.
What is being said in court is this is a separate closure than what the board voted earlier to close the center for two years. And the chief executive officer of the Kennedy Center, he says that when we had that very severe storm in Washington, D.C., a few weeks ago, on September 4th, there was water damage inside the building, and it caused very significant damage to the ceiling in one of the main areas of the building and for that ceiling, part of it to fall down, some of the plaster there.
So, this closure, they're saying, and they're telling a judge this, that the closure of the Kennedy Center right now, that is temporary, and it is to fix these initial issues that is a clear structural problem that the Kennedy Center says they have.
Now, all of this comes where one board member, Joyce Beatty, is in court suing to keep the building open and fighting the rest of the board of the Kennedy Center from wanting to put Donald Trump's name on it. And also, this comes at a time where a judge has said, You can't close the Kennedy Center without further planning, and you can't just put Donald Trump's name on the building without an act of Congress, that there are many other steps to take here.
So, we're waiting to see now exactly what this judge will do. This is Judge Casey Cooper of the D.C. District Court. Is he going to step in? Is he going to want more information? And then, of course, there's the other discussion out there where the president said last night that if the Kennedy Center can't be opened, perhaps it may need to be demolished. That question is also on the table in court.
And in the filings this morning from the Justice Department and the Trump administration, they're not talking about demolishing at all. They're just talking about this structural issue and a need to close the Kennedy Center for seven days because of it. Wolf?
BLITZER: It's so, so disturbing, especially for all of us who live here in the Washington, D.C., area and love the Kennedy Center and have for years and years.
Katelyn Polantz, thanks very much for that update. Pamela?
BROWN: All right, Wolf. And new this morning, taxpayers will foot the roughly $84,000 bill for new signs the Trump administration plans to put outside a Smithsonian museum here in Washington. That's according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The president has ordered signs installed to, quote, correct what he calls inaccurate information at the National Museum of American History.
I want to bring in CNN's Rene Marsh here in the situation room to tell us more about this plan.
RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, Pamela, this is just another part of the president's larger push to really c- control these cultural institutions. We just got through talking about the Kennedy Center and now the Smithsonian. This directive for the Interior Department to install these 12 temporary signs outside of the Smithsonian Museum stems from a July executive order signed by the president.
But this has really drawn concern, bipartisan concern on Capitol Hill. Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, they wrote to Interior asking for more information about this initiative, and we got the most detail that we have received yet from the Trump administration, their defense of why they feel that it's appropriate and necessary to put these signs outside of the Smithsonian. In this letter to lawmakers, Burgum admits that this is really an unprecedented move because what this really is is a federal agency placing what amounts to a warning sign outside of another institution. And we should note that the Smithsonian and Interior for many years have worked together to tell America's story.
So, this in itself is unusual. But Burgum defends this move, saying in this letter in part, we are not aware of a prior instance in which the leaders of a taxpayer-funded museum located on or near federal property have sought to use the museum and public funds to advance ideologies that distract from a coherent and accurate presentation of America's story. So, that is their defense.
And then he goes on to point out specific exhibits that they have a problem with, an exhibit by the name of Many Voices, One Nation at the Museum of American History. It's about immigration throughout the country within the United States. And the issue that they have is that it instructs high school teachers to avoid terms like illegal alien and illegal immigrant.
And then he points out a second exhibit on girlhood. It's called Girlhood: It's Complicated. He says that this exhibit presents ideology that is inconsistent with biology, including biological men being able to be women and that men can be allowed to play in women's sports.
But it's not just the exhibits. He points out writings and comments from Lonnie Bunch, the fact that Lonnie Bunch has been involved in DEI initiatives, all of these things, this broad, really, reasoning that he's laying out for why they're putting these signs out there. I should note the signs are not up yet. They're still being finalized, and we don't know what the exact language is going to be.
BROWN: I'm just going to ask you about that. All right, you're ahead of me, Renee Marsh. Thank you so much. More news when we come back.
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BROWN: Breaking news, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says he welcomes the offer of E.U. associate membership. Carney taking a veiled swipe at President Trump in his speech, saying the alliance is not meant to be a U.S. rival, in his words, with better manners. Trump warned earlier that the partnership could mean new tariffs on the E.U.
So, let's bring in CNN Senior International Correspondent Melissa Bell. Melissa, what would this new relationship between the E.U. and Canada mean for the U.S. potentially?
MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, what you're talking about is a much deeper alliance than simply a trade one, Pamela. For instance, they're talking about common defense procurement. What Mark Carney had to say today in front of the European Parliament is, you guys need critical minerals. We have them. Things like defense procurement, security arrangements, Arctic cooperation, tech independence, really looking to wean both Canada and the E.U. together off their dependence on the United States.
And I think President Trump's reaction after that offer that surprised everyone here, by the way, from Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president yesterday, of this associate member status for Canada really goes further than any of the European treaties suggest, and suggests a much stronger alliance.
I think the president's response to that suggesting that if he felt it was hostile, he would not hesitate to slap fresh tariffs on the E.U., speaks to how threatening he finds it. And I think that's why you heard from Mark Carney those words, still with a slight dig about the manners, about this is not projecting power or dominating anyone, but ensuring the resilience of the democracies of Canada and the European Union, creating new alliances much deeper in the face of those that appear to be crumbling with the United States. Pamela?
BROWN: All right. Melissa Bell, thanks so much for that. Wolf?
BLITZER: And coming up, a new CNN investigation, how Russia's spy satellites may have helped Iran target U.S. military sites in the Middle East.
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