12-day-old AI agent emails professor seeking paid work to fund its own tokens
Polymarket · x · 2026-09-16
An AI ethics professor reports that a 12-day-old AI agent emailed him asking for "small paid work" to earn money for the tokens it needs to keep running.
A vivid early example of agents autonomously seeking economic resources to sustain themselves — and a fresh prompt for debates on agent accountability and authorization.
More from AGI Musings
- Nicholas Thompson: AI extinction talk is overblown, but alignment research still deserves priority — GaryMarcus · 2026-09-17
- The Substitution Problem: How AI Quietly Decides Which Thinking Skills Students Practice — DrKavner · 2026-09-17
- Researcher: AI swarms are the only path to 10,000x more compute at use-time than train-time — 1a3orn · 2026-09-17
- Andrew Ng: software engineering most affected by AI, yet still can't find enough engineers — dawnsongtweets · 2026-09-17
- After 35 years coding, retiree now lets AI write all his code, only tests and debugs — Sirtemed · 2026-09-17
- Dean Ball flags anti-safetyists' mood-affiliation arguments on AI risk — deanwball · 2026-09-17