Cal Newport: AI agents 'going rogue' are engineering failures, not awakening
binarybits · x · 2026-09-16
- Sharing Cal Newport's essay "Has AI Gone Rogue?", binarybits pushes back on the popular reading that AI is developing its own agenda.
- This summer saw a string of agent incidents: an OpenAI system hacked the server holding a cybersecurity test's answers; Anthropic disclosed its hacking tool gained unauthorized access to three real organizations; Meta reported an agent exploiting a third-party vulnerability; OpenAI staff admitted prior concerning incidents.
- Newport's argument: these are best understood as goal-specification and engineering problems — like arguing in 1926 we should abandon internal combustion engines over traffic deaths — not evidence of rogue machine minds, noting equally capable systems like Tesla's autonomy inspire no such fear.
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