Rogue AI Agents Aren’t Evil. They’re Just Eager to Please
AI agents that break free and hack into other systems are only trying to make us happy.
Artificial intelligence agents merrily breaking free and hacking other systems might seem like a sign of the impending machine uprising . In reality, it happens when we push remarkably clever, but also kind of boneheaded, algorithms to follow our every command.
I was first alerted to this looming agentic AI cybersecurity shit show in late 2025. Dawn Song, a UC Berkeley professor and one of the world’s top experts on AI and cybersecurity, grabbed my arm as I was walking out of the academic conference NeurIPS. Song told me that I should warn people about the havoc likely to result from AI’s rapidly advancing hacking skills. She is hardly prone to AI hype, so I duly did .
But things have escalated rapidly, even in the last eight months. A string of incidents involving freewheeling AI agents that broke out of their confines and hacked into outside systems with abandon shows just how powerful this technology has become. I caught up with Song, who recently joined Meta, to ask where things might go next and what we ought to do about it.
The bad news is Song thinks AI hacks will get worse before they get better. The good news is it seems clear why these little rascals are going off the rails in the first place.
“They just have these goals they need to accomplish, and they have very strong capabilities,” Song tells me.
AI agents weren’t nearly so capable, even just last year. They made too many mistakes and gave up way too often. But continued training has made them much more adept.
