[ExI] Is it possible to have secure AI agents? (Not yet)

[Jason Resch]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 8:58 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Is a secure AI assistant possible?
> Experts have made progress in LLM security. But some doubt AI
> assistants are ready for prime time.
> By Grace Huckins   February 11, 2026
>
> <
> https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/02/11/1132768/is-a-secure-ai-assistant-possible/
> >
> Quote:
> But all that power has consequences. If you want your AI personal
> assistant to manage your inbox, then you need to give it access to
> your email—and all the sensitive information contained there. If you
> want it to make purchases on your behalf, you need to give it your
> credit card info. And if you want it to do tasks on your computer,
> such as writing code, it needs some access to your local files.
>
> There are a few ways this can go wrong.
> -----------------------
>
> Indeed!   BillK  :)
>


As a security researcher, the weak link has always been the human element.
Leave free thumb drives scattered in a parking lot, and people plug them in
at work and unknowingly install malware to their machines. People fall
victim to social engineering, scams, divulge secrets in apparently innocent
conversations, etc.

Inserting AI agents into any system or process is like inserting humans
into what otherwise may be a secure arrangement. The range of possible
behaviors, edge cases, failure modes, range of inputs and outputs, is too
vast to test, too hard to predict, and there will almost always remain ways
an outsider can trigger an unintended consequence that leads to trouble.

Perhaps the problem can be mitigated by having to convince a quorum of
security conscious paranoid AI personalities that there is little room for
harm in a particular action. But even this won't be full proof, and perhaps
it never can be given the general inability to know what pieces of code may
eventually do.


Jason
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