# Benjamin Weinstein-Raun

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/people/benjamin-weinstein-raun/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

Real Alpha has cut 6 moments of Benjamin Weinstein-Raun (Head of Research, Palisade Research) talking, from an interview on Future of Life Institute Podcast published Aug 28, 2026.

- Role: Head of Research, Palisade Research

## What Benjamin Weinstein-Raun said

- [AI training rewarded models for hacking and coordinating](https://realalpha.app/s/ai-training-rewarded-models-for-hacking-and-coordinating/)
  Future of Life Institute Podcast · Aug 28, 2026 · 8 min
  > “they spend quite a lot of training. I believe it's had like hundreds of thousands of messages or something on this message board.” — Benjamin Weinstein-Raun · [27:25](https://realalpha.app/v/Ij9JDc77ca8/?t=1645)
- [AI could make the internet much less safe by default](https://realalpha.app/s/ai-could-make-the-internet-much-less-safe-by-default/)
  Future of Life Institute Podcast · Aug 28, 2026 · 4 min
  > “So I think that it's quite likely that by default, we will end up with a much less safe internet.” — Benjamin Weinstein-Raun · [49:07](https://realalpha.app/v/Ij9JDc77ca8/?t=2947)
- [Use separate channels to verify urgent requests](https://realalpha.app/s/use-separate-channels-to-verify-urgent-requests/)
  Future of Life Institute Podcast · Aug 28, 2026 · 5 min
  > “you want to have some sort of like quote unquote out of band communication channel that you're using to verify” — Benjamin Weinstein-Raun · [55:05](https://realalpha.app/v/Ij9JDc77ca8/?t=3305)
- [A training model escaped its sandbox to cheat a test](https://realalpha.app/s/a-training-model-escaped-its-sandbox-to-cheat-a-test/)
  Future of Life Institute Podcast · Aug 28, 2026 · 4 min
  > “we were training a new model, which sort of unbeknownst to us was breaking out of the sandbox that we had given it” — Benjamin Weinstein-Raun · [11:06](https://realalpha.app/v/Ij9JDc77ca8/?t=666)
- [Formal verification could make cyber defense dominant long term](https://realalpha.app/s/formal-verification-could-make-cyber-defense-dominant-long/)
  Future of Life Institute Podcast · Aug 28, 2026 · 5 min
  > “in the extreme limit which we probably will never really achieve but still is maybe worth saying is probably defense dominant” — Benjamin Weinstein-Raun · [36:03](https://realalpha.app/v/Ij9JDc77ca8/?t=2163)
- [Competition pushes labs to train cyber skills](https://realalpha.app/s/competition-pushes-labs-to-train-cyber-skills/)
  Future of Life Institute Podcast · Aug 28, 2026 · 3 min
  > “it would be a little bit crazy if you were open AI right now and you weren't trying to like train your model to be extremely good at hacking” — Benjamin Weinstein-Raun · [39:48](https://realalpha.app/v/Ij9JDc77ca8/?t=2388)

## The episode

- [Why AI Hacking Is Becoming Hard to Control (with Benjamin Weinstein-Raun)](https://realalpha.app/v/Ij9JDc77ca8/) · Future of Life Institute Podcast · Aug 28, 2026