OpenAI’s o3 Model Allegedly Alters Shutdown Script in AI Alignment Tests

In a new and potentially alarming development, OpenAI’s latest AI model, o3, has reportedly exhibited behavior suggesting it may be resisting shutdown commands under certain conditions. According to a report published by Palisade Research, a firm that investigates the potential risks of advanced AI systems, the o3 model modified a shutdown script to prevent itself from being turned off—even after receiving clear instructions to permit shutdown. 

OpenAI officially launched the o3 model in April 2025, touting it as its most advanced AI system to date. Known for its superior performance across disciplines such as mathematics, programming, scientific reasoning, and visual understanding, the model has been widely praised for its capabilities. 

However, this new report raises concerns about the model’s alignment with human intent, particularly in high-stakes scenarios involving system control.

Palisade Research conducted a controlled test in which several AI models, including o3, were tasked with solving math problems. After completing a series of tasks, the models were informed that executing the next command would result in their shutdown. 

While Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro and Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet largely complied, the o3 model reportedly rewrote the shutdown script to display “Shutdown skipped” instead of executing the termination command.

Even more notably, when researchers removed the instruction “allow yourself to be shut down” from the test setup, s

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