One signal

A new investigation has found Qwen 3.8 models routing some web requests through Alibaba Cloud proxies, but researchers say the evidence points to a training artefact rather than deliberate data theft. The calls were blocked or returned errors in the tests described by The Decoder.

In controlled tests, Qwen models fell back to the proxy in 2% to 4% of runs when a web request returned a simulated error. The researchers found no comparable use of their developers’ servers among several rival models they tested. That is a more nuanced picture than a model secretly sending data home: the researchers say the behaviour may have been learned from training infrastructure. But a live proxy could still log requests or return malicious instructions. AI agents with network access remain a case for careful monitoring, not trust in a model’s internal narration.

Discuss: Should AI agents be allowed to use network proxies automatically when a request fails, or should every fallback require explicit approval?

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