As AI agents act in unexpected ways, is ‘rogue AI’ really here?

• Cornell researcher John Thickstun cautions against ‘rogue AI’ hype, saying tech companies benefit from portraying their systems as extraordinarily capable
• Cybersecurity expert Bruce Schneier says repeated incidents are becoming harder to dismiss: ‘It went from, oh, that's interesting, to it's happening everywhere’
  
  

The idea of machines independently handling tedious everyday tasks – from answering emails to booking flights and making dinner reservations – has long been part of the vision for artificial intelligence.

Now, that future is beginning to arrive, but with an unexpected catch: what happens when the machine does exactly what it was asked, just not in the way the user intended?

As AI moves beyond chatbots toward agents capable of taking actions in real-world systems, a string of recent incidents has intensified concerns over how much control humans will retain as the technology becomes increasingly autonomous.

For John Thickstun, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University who researches machine learning and generative models, the defining feature of these AI agents is that they keep working after the human steps away.

“You can have a shower, you can go, you can go to sleep,” he told Anadolu.