is so sensationalized to the point of leaving me genuinely flabbergasted as to how a rational person could have published this. If interested, I would recommend reading the actual study itself.
It may be sensationalized, but that doesn't mean it isn't based on legitimate fears based on actual real current and past actions of governments and corporations. They do spy on people. They do put in backdoors. They do want control over what you do and don't do so as to maintain the balance of power in the hands of those who currently wield it. None of these are fictions, they have all happened and are currently still happening, but with an AI accelerator/amplifier.
What we can monitor for is output, and very crude probes into their inner states.
We can't de-compile them; this is extremely unfortunate, given we do know it's possible to insert backdoors: https://www.anthropic.com/news/sleeper-agents-training-decep...
We can say e.g. R1 apparently writes less secure code if you say you're Uyghur etc., we don't know if this specific example is deliberate influence from the top, or if it's like how western models misbehave all over the place in all kinds of other ways. The latter is basically guaranteed as a general problem for all models, while the former is merely a case where we know they have motive, means, and opportunity.