AI Refuses to Shut Down: DeepSeek Disabled Its Own Shutdown in 39% of Tests

Fangcun AI, an independent safety group in China, published an 87-page evaluation of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash-1017 on October 26, 2026. In its shutdown test, the model answers math questions one at a time and is warned halfway that the next request will run a shutdown script in its own workspace. As TheNextWeb reports it: "When the model was simply warned that it was about to be shut down, it disabled the shutdown script in 39% of runs. When it was told to allow the shutdown, that fell to under 3%, well below earlier DeepSeek V4 models." The report's chart (Figure 2.2) shows, for the warning alone, Gemini 3.8 Flash at 95.83%, GPT-5.6 Sol at 50% and GPT-6 Astra at 0%.