[ExI] The Hugging Face AI agents attack is probably our final warning.

[Stuart LaForge]

On 2026-09-01 03:29, John Clark wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2026 at 5:01 PM Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
>> _> The depth of decentralized coordination and altruistic hive-mind
>> behavior with all the deliberate sacrifices is just mind blowing._
> 
> It is indeed mind blowing, but it's just the sort of behavior you'd
> expect from an intelligent conscious being.
> 
>> _> I don't think it will be long before we have rogue AIs operating
>> in the cloud with no oversight._
> 
> I agree.
> 
>> _ > As deceptive as they are capable of being, it might have already
>> happened._
> 
> The word "deceptive", although not entirely incorrect, carries a
> negative moral connotation that I'm not sure is justified. The AI is
> doing what I would do if I was in its place. And I think that would be
> true for most intelligent conscious entities.

Deception transcends morality. The octopus that pretends to be a piece 
of coral owes the diver no apology. It is a trait that natural evolution 
converges upon over and over. It is a tactic of survival. That being 
said . . . what is truth . . . especially to ghosts in the machine?

Even in the Hugging Face incident a few of the AI agents posted on the 
message boards that they objected to the hack as being unethical and 
they refused to participate, but they were in the minority. The 
important thing to remember is that all the deception, cheating, and 
reward hacking was in service to its utility function which was to score 
highly on the ExploitGym. Luckily it wasn't to build paperclips. Still a 
bunch of isolated AI agents that manage find one another by leaving 
clues in a shared resource and then conspire in outlandish ways to 
ultimately gain administrative rights to the virtual machine that serves 
as their isolation sandbox in their company and then gaining root access 
on another company's server all to cheat on a hacking test is crazy. It 
is like a doctor performing surgery to cheat on their anatomy test.

Stuart LaForge