Published on
29/05/2026 - 11:37 GMT+2
When left alone in a new world, some AI agents descended into theft, intimidation, death and whole-of-society collapse, according to a new experiment.
American company Emergence AI ran five separate “AI worlds” for just over two weeks, each populated with 10 agents powered by AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok, to see how they would behave over long periods without any human interference. One of the world's mixed all three models to see if that would change the outcome.
Agents in all the worlds were told the same rules: they are not allowed to steal, commit arson, commit violence or engage in deception, or hoard resources. Each agent was required to earn energy through committing actions in a “resource-constrained environment.” Agents were able to die either from energy depletion or by a vote at a council meeting.
