Even in this incident, OpenAI had benchmarks that were broken because a task expected an AI to be able to access Google Drive, but the sandbox was set to deny access to Google Drive.

This kind of isolation-induced task breakage was what prompted some of the AIs to start probing their infra for a way to get internet access. Which funneled agents to the "secret hacker message board". Oopsie.

"Air gapping a test env" has an actual cost. Not just in infrastructure dollars that would be better spent on buying more GPUs, but also in all the friction it adds to every step you want to take. I'm absolutely unsurprised that they weren't all in on tightening down every bolt on day 0.