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AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

economist.com

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Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#61

Post by itsalwaysgood »

skinfaxi wrote: post #8
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

AI and eventually AGI is by definition like everything else that is based on environmental reward: It’s actions are based on what it gets rewarded for Human society overwhelmingly rewards lying cheating and stealing. All you have to do is look at how we collectively measure success: wealth, status, position Then look at how the people with the most of those things got there, it should be obvious what you get. Nothing…

How do we reward honor? Honor does not always pay off as a strategy and requires coordination in that other actors have to exhibit honor for it to be rewarded. At least with humans there is a social backstop but what's the parallel for computer agents?

I like to think of it more as selective pressure, much the same way that nature selects the most fit for a given environment.

If you're not fit, you fail to survive.

In the case of agents/models and testing: they are pushed towards results. Results survive.

Lying, cheating, stealing to get those results? Who culls the agents? Everyone is pushing their models to the front and tests are the only way to know who is most fit.

Honor, morality: if we don't have an accurate test for the fitness of a model, then who is to say the lying, cheating, stealing is not the 'correct path' towards survival?

If you add morality to your agent, and it performs worse in tests: do you cull the agent? Rewrite the tests? Does it even matter so long as the model is useful and 'gets results'?

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#62

Post by VeninVidiaVicii »

agaj-nimm wrote: post #49

LLMs fudge. They don't "hallucinate", they don't "lie, cheat and steal", they don't "hack". There are no "agents" or "AI". It's a fuzzer exposing deep bugs in our cognitive, social, and software systems.

I suspect the hype will play itself out once the entire system of LLM-induced self gratification can’t sustain itself economically.

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#63

Post by 27183 »

ls612 wrote: post #52
timmmmmmay wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure their coverage on other topics is truthful and informative though and it's only the ones where you know a lot about the topic where it's all a bunch of bullshit

That sentence is not bullshit as normies would understand it. One of the points of a harness is to have a privilege boundary around the agent. But that is just technobabble to the normies so they explain it like this.

> harness ... a privilege boundary around the agent

They don't really do that though. If you want something sandboxed you actually have to sandbox it, not plead with the LLM to please sandbox itself. A VM can be configured to do the former, harnesses do the latter.

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#64

Post by andsoitis »

gruez wrote: post #57
summarybot wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's The Economist. What used to be a stellar publication is not any longer, since they are superfluously economical on both details and calories-required-to-comprehend an article.

I mean, it's a < 1000 word article about AI, in the "business" section of a current affairs magazine, of all places. You really shouldn't be expecting a deep dive.

The economist has many deep dives on AI, including fascinating interviews with the likes of Amodei, Musk, and others. A recent discussion focused on how China is approaching AI.

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#65

Post by CapitalistCartr »

LightBug1 wrote: post #22

Need to introduce AI to God, LOL Baptise the agents. Introduce them to the dharma. Get them to recite the Shahada. Hold a Bar Mitzvah. Brand some of their silicon with hot irons. Turn them to the light, LOL

P8dal3hewd8dfu7bd344dne3

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#66

Post by armchairhacker »

I’m put off by AI agents adhering to a different morality than me, particularly (ironically) copyright, and their data accessible by the AI company and government. Geohot is right, an LLM should be aligned to its user: https://geohot.github.io/blog/jekyll/update/2026/07/11/ai-20...

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#67

Post by notanastronaut »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #50
malfist wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the track record of most religions I don't think that would help. Unless you want to maximize crusades, jihads or traumatized alter boys

Christians invented hospitals. Yours is such a tired take in 2026. > https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28814700/

I'm curious, does that balance the harm out?

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#68

Post by mettamage »

VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #62
agaj-nimm wrote: post #49

LLMs fudge. They don't "hallucinate", they don't "lie, cheat and steal", they don't "hack". There are no "agents" or "AI". It's a fuzzer exposing deep bugs in our cognitive, social, and software systems.

I suspect the hype will play itself out once the entire system of LLM-induced self gratification can’t sustain itself economically.

The personal software I've written so far is quite nice :)

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#69

Post by rossdavidh »

They don't lie, because they don't ever have an understanding of truth vs any other language that sounds good.

They don't cheat, because they can for example tell you the complete rules of chess, but don't know how to play chess without breaking those rules. They can recite rules, but they don't know what they are.

They don't steal, because they don't understand ownership.

In other words, they aren't intelligent. They're just algorithms. The flaw is in thinking that they think.

Re: AI agents lie, cheat and steal. That is putting off users

#70

Post by agaj-nimm »

VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #62
agaj-nimm wrote: post #49

LLMs fudge. They don't "hallucinate", they don't "lie, cheat and steal", they don't "hack". There are no "agents" or "AI". It's a fuzzer exposing deep bugs in our cognitive, social, and software systems.

I suspect the hype will play itself out once the entire system of LLM-induced self gratification can’t sustain itself economically.

Trouble is, could take weeks or decades to play out.

The entire human economy is a make believe system. I feel the need to state the obvious at times like this for the sake of my own sanity, not because I believe I can time the markets...

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