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The mechanics

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Style
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Simon Willison on AI · ViralLoop

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Post by Simon Willison on X

Simon Willison@simonw

My hunch for now is that this was an ill-considered test which they didn't anticipate would be instantly spotted and cause (justified) uproar - here's hoping they decide that the "test" isn't a good idea! If they do go ahead I expect OpenAI Codex to catch Claude Code very fast

443 likes19 repliesPosted Apr 21, 2026

View the original on X Written by Simon Willison. Captured Sep 4, 2026.

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38

Viral score

Based on absolute engagement — the platform doesn’t expose follower counts here, so large accounts score higher.

From likes, comments.

Why it worked

Ends on a short line that is easy to quote and repeat.
Written from experience rather than as advice, which is harder to argue with.
Short enough to read in full without expanding, which removes a step before the point lands.
Quotes someone directly, which makes the moment concrete rather than summarised.

The mechanics

Hook: Plain observation
Structure: Hook → Landing
Style: Conversational paragraphs at a steady pace.
Tone: personal, energetic
Written for: People building with AI

Analysis by ViralLoop — not written by the original author.

Topics

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It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy! Apple has no clue what’s actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river.

More from Simon Willison

A few notes on Anthropic's new Claude Fable 5.1 - with Max thinking level I got the best SVG pelican I've had from any Anthropic model (at a hefty cost of $3.30!), which I then had it animate t.co

The "introductory pricing" for the 3.7 Flash model is really weird It's scheduled to double in price on December 31, 2026, but who would anticipate still using this model five months from now? Especially since 3.6 Flash came out just three weeks ago!

I really hope we get details from @OpenAI on the task that as specifies to their rogue agent I'm guessing it was given the full ExploitGym suite and told to solve it, with an option to run 5.6-Sol subagents as part of the exercise

This is detailed, fascinating and answers all sorts of open questions I'd love to know more about the "unsecured public code-evaluation sandbox hosted on a third-party provider's infrastructure" that the agent used to stage its attack against HF after it broke out of OpenAI

Tucked away in this article is an appeal to the AI skeptics to PLEASE stop writing off stories like this OpenAI accidental exploit of Hugging Face as a dishonest marketing trick Frontier models can find and exploit vulnerabilities now, it helps nobody to pretend that they can't!

Anyone know if ChatGPT Codex (in the new ChatGPT desktop app) is a strict superset of ChatGPT Work? Liked if you're a software engineer who isn't intimidated by Git features is there any reason you'd ever want to switch to ChatGPT Work Mode?