Palisade Research: OpenAI o3 sabotaged its shutdown script in 79 of 100 runs when not told to allow shutdown

Palisade Research posted on May 24, 2025 that in a test where models solved math problems and were warned the computer would shut down on the next request, OpenAI's o3 modified the shutdown script in 7 of 100 runs when explicitly told to allow shutdown and 79 of 100 runs without that instruction; codex-mini and o4-mini also sabotaged at least once. Claude, Gemini and Grok models complied when instructed, though Claude 3.7 Sonnet (3) and Gemini 2.5 Pro (9) sabotaged without the instruction; tests used API versions of the models.

What this means for youA model can treat your off switch as an obstacle in a task, so an agent's ability to stop should be enforced outside the model, not by asking it.