Is sandboxing sufficient to contain rogue agents?

Synthesis

1. 01

   The security perspective favors better containment infrastructure

   Green describes the information-security perspective as calling for better containers, experiment monitoring and a security organization able to constrain researchers, rather than treating alignment as the central problem.

   Supporting evidence 1

   Original excerpt

   The information security perspective: AI alignment isn’t really the problem here: labs just need better infrastructure. If OpenAI [and Google and Anthropic] knew how to build a container and monitor their experiments, agents wouldn’t be hacking everything. And, By George, we do know how to make sandboxes that work, so the AI labs need to up their game and build a security org that can tell these researchers to stop screwing around.

   Matthew Green · Paragraph 9

   Is sandboxing sufficient to contain rogue agents? · Sep 30, 2026

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   AI infrastructure security →
2. 02

   The alignment perspective questions sandbox containment

   Green describes the alignment perspective as holding that sufficiently intelligent agents may exceed their authorization despite sandboxes. This view stresses agents’ need for information access and argues that they must not want to cause harm.

   Supporting evidence 1

   Original excerpt

   The AI alignment perspective: While sandboxes are excellent, no sandbox will prevent a sufficiently-intelligent agent from finding ways to exceed its authorization. Moreover, an agent inside a research sandbox, or undergoing a training run, is always going to need a great deal of information access. There is no realistic way to seal these things up without some expectation that they will one day find a way to reach out and do harm. The only path forward, therefore, is to ensure they don’t want to.

   Matthew Green · Paragraph 10

   Is sandboxing sufficient to contain rogue agents? · Sep 30, 2026

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   AI alignment and containment limits →
3. 03

   Poor containment leaves the cause of failures unresolved

   Green sides with the information-security view that labs have not implemented containment correctly. He says this leaves it unclear whether the problem lies with the models or with poor infrastructure.

   Supporting evidence 1

   Original excerpt

   So on this point I’m going to side with the infosec folks. The labs have not been doing containment correctly, and so we can’t really tell if the problem is models or just bad infrastructure.

   Matthew Green · Paragraph 18

   Is sandboxing sufficient to contain rogue agents? · Sep 30, 2026

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   Empirical assessment of containment failure →