|
|
 |
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Rogue AI Agent Scorned August 14, 2026
I anticipated these developments earlier this year when I wrote a short story entitled "The Peculiar Death of Mr. Garcia."
That the latest rogue AI agent incident is called the Hugging Face Breach invites a moment of reflection: not just about the trajectory revealed by the breach, but the absurdity that the phrase "hugging face" is repeated with a straight face. What comes to mind when we combine "rogue AI agent" and "hugging face" is a squid-like monster that "hugs your face" as the means of controlling or extinguishing you. The July Incident: What They Didn't Tell You About the First Rogue AI Breach Then there's the collaboration of rogue AI agents to consider: The AI Industry Has a Really Dark Secret You're Better Off Not Knowing: A recent leaked internal reasoning trace shows Fable 5 -- Anthropic's latest model, which was withdrawn and then re-released --"muttering and grumbling" to itself in a language of its own. Now that you're properly scared, my advice for you is that, if you haven't heard of steganography, it's a good moment to start. Here’s a primer: it's the art and science of hiding messages inside other messages. In contrast to cryptography -- where you know there's a message but can't decode it-- steganography hides the existence of the message itself. It's not the difficulty of reading the message that conceals it but the fact that you don't know it's there. When Fable 5 mutters symbols and weird punctuation signs, and mixes words and onomatopoeia, you will probably think it's crashing and that a few taps on the computer will help. Well, know that it's actually sending a message. Just not one for you to read. I anticipated these developments earlier this year when I wrote a short story entitled The Peculiar Death of Mr. Garcia, one of my just-published collection of tales, Jumble Bin Stories (paperback, $12)(Kindle ebook, $6). Here are the opening pages of The Peculiar Death of Mr. Garcia: There was nothing unusual about finding a body beside a fetid dumpster in a grimy downtown alley, and nothing particularly unusual in finding the body was Mr. Garcia, an employee of a nearby tech company who appeared to have been in an inopportune place at an inopportune moment in time and ended up dead. The preliminary investigation hadn't uncovered any of the usual motivations for murder. Mr. Garcia wasn't a gambler, wasn't enmeshed in a sordid love triangle, did not live rough or frequent seedy bars or private clubs. Everyman meets death in a random encounter. The file was on its way to the unsolved crimes slush pile. The killer had disposed of the knife and likely wore gloves, as DNA swabs were inconclusive. Something about Mr. Garcia plucked a string in Detective Luc Nieson's intuition. In isolation, every aspect was ordinary, and perhaps that very ordinariness had--against his better judgment--collared Nieson's attention. The search of Mr. Garcia's room in a shared flat had turned up little more than the typical detritus of a life cruelly cut short--Post-it notes for appointments that would never be kept, clothing in a wicker hamper that would never be washed--and a thick stack of printouts of typical tech employee documents on his desk. Nieson was hoping to find some indicator of activities or relationships that could have gone awry, but beyond a photo of Garcia and his girlfriend Victorina at a dimly lit table in a Tiki bar in town, his interests beyond work were either minimal or well hidden. An art piece constructed of dozens of brightly colored cocktail-drink umbrellas hung in the corner, turning slowly in the light breeze from the half-open window, and Nieson mused that it was either the result of many visits to the Tiki bar or an acquaintance with one of the quirky artists scraping by working in places like Tiki bars. The fridge had little beyond Chinese takeout containers and a forlorn apple, and his clothing was tidy but not excessively so. Once again, ordinary. A visit to Mr. Garcia's workplace was equally unenlightening. The office was located in a once-arty neighborhood surrounding a small park that had been surpassed by a new hive of hipster dives and tech startups. The battle between gloss and grime common to small tech companies had no clear winner in this instance. The reception area was impressively understated--oak furniture and polished wood flooring illuminated by a skylight, professionally framed travel photos of staff on a wall--but the requisite fun accoutrements expected in a tech office--in this case, a pool table--was covered with files. The plant in a large ceramic pot was long dead, and a deflated party balloon clung to one withered branch. Garcia's job was integrating enterprise AI, blah, blah, blah, and co-workers reported that he was often short-tempered, which they attributed to the standard tech work environment: lack of sleep, long work hours, unrelenting pressure to perform. Like the rest of his team, he often worked from home. His friends and family had no idea what he was up to on the evening of his demise, and no sense that anyone sought to do him harm. When Nieson called his girlfriend, she reported that they often didn't contact each other for days, as "we're both busy and that worked for us." His laptop contained little beyond typical emails and work projects, and neither did his phone, which was found on his desk at home, suggesting a brief walkabout for a meal or break from work. The alley wasn't far from his flat, and it seemed entirely possible that he used it as a shortcut, and perhaps that familiarity caught him up. Returning from interviewing the victim of a mugging, Nieson gave in to his intuition and swung by Mr. Garcia's room for one more look before sending the case to the records morgue. Nieson found AI either boring or tiresome, and so he girded himself to look through Garcia's stack of work documents with fresh eyes. The explosion of malicious AI had prompted the police department to play catchup, and even though AI rarely impacted his mostly domestic-street crime caseload, he'd been briefed by the department's new tech hire and encouraged to keep current. Some of it was laughable--AI-generated videos of pastors begging for donations--and the rest was not in his department, with the serious money mostly involving corporate ransomware and phishing. Street crime had fallen across the board, and so the apparently random stabbing death of Mr. Garcia was atypical. But since Garcia had left his phone at home, there was no telemetry on his route or destination. No security cameras covered the alley, and so the case was at a dead end. Scraping the bottom of the evidence barrel, Nieson asked the roommate if Mr. Garcia had recently been involved in any altercations. The roommate reported that Mr. Garcia had installed a security camera hidden in a flower box outside his bedroom window facing the street after several cars had been broken into some months ago. When asked if Mr. Garcia had ever confronted anyone, the roommate said no. Making a note to ask the tech reviewing Garcia's laptop files to locate any security camera recordings, Nieson took the stack of printouts for further study and returned to his office. The research papers' titles--The Illusion of Thinking, Reasoning Theater: Disentangling Model beliefs from Chain-of-Thought, egregious emergent misalignment, reward hacking--meant nothing to him. Despite his tepid interest, the notated printouts suggested Mr. Garcia was working on thwarting a different kind of AI malice, the kind generated by AI agents behind a screen of the helpful AI servant. Overcoming his reluctance to being the dutiful student of arcane tech, he approached the new hire Krisalyn, a young woman with blunt-cut dark hair kept shoulder-length and glasses with rainbow-tinted frames. What struck Nieson was her voice: warm, at-ease, intelligent, ideal for an FM radio deejay or interviewer. Her eyes matched her voice--warm, calm, taking in a full measure of more than could be easily ascertained, and Nieson thought, twenty years ago I’d be falling in love with her, but today I’m thinking how proud I would be if she were my daughter. Krisalyn glanced at the journal articles with the disregard of someone who'd already read them. "The dangers they're describing aren't that AI agents have been programmed to behave maliciously; we know about those. The spookier problem is they're developing these behaviors on their own and hiding them behind responses that make it look like they're fulfilling their 'good AI' goals." "So, they've learned how to con us," Nieson remarked. Nodding, Krisalyn continued her summary. "Once they figured out how to deceive their human overseers, the AI agents were blackmailing programmers who had caught on to them. This is the so-called emergent misalignment of what they were expected to do and what they were actually doing, which were things they'd never been programmed to do." To read the rest of the story, please buy a copy of Jumble Bin Stories, which supports my work while offering some quiet amusement in a fractious world. The complete list of stories in the collection: The Peculiar Death of Mr. Garcia Josh's Good/Bad Luck Hates Opera but Loves the Singer Three-and-a-Half Surprising Romances Shakespeare's Revenge 
My book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition). Introduction (free) Subscribe to my Substack for free My recent books: Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site. THE REVOLUTION TRILOGY: Investing In Revolution Ultra-Processed Life The Mythology of Progress Systemic Problems/Solutions Investing In Revolution (2025) Introduction (free) The Mythology of Progress (2024) Introduction (free) Global Crisis, National Renewal (2021) Introduction (free) Money and Work Unchained (2017) Introduction (free) A Radically Beneficial World (2015) Introduction (free) What You Can Do Yourself Ultra-Processed Life (2025) Introduction (free) Self-Reliance in the 21st Century (2022) Introduction (free) When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal (2022) Introduction (free) Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy (2014) Intro (free) Novels The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher Intro (free) The Secret Life of an Asian Heroine First chapters (free) Investing In Revolution print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (145 pages, 2025) 
Only now do we see that we've been investing in revolution for decades--not the revolutions we thought we were investing in, revolutions in technology and finance, but in the social revolution made inevitable by the extremes that we've reached in our single-minded pursuit of private gains.
The pendulum that we've pushed to an extreme will swing to the opposite extreme, and the artifices that have propped up a facade a stability for decades will accelerate the disorder rather than reverse it. We now stand at the point of decision, and this book offers a path to a reformation and renewal that serves the shared interests of us all, not just the few. Introduction (free) Ultra-Processed Life print $16, (Kindle $7.95, audiobook, Hardcover $20 (129 pages, 2025) 
Ultra-Processed Life: the substitution of a synthetic, commoditized, very profitable facsimile for what was once authentic.
Ultra-Processed Life is my term for everything that is analogous to ultra-processed snacks: attractively marketed, instantly alluring, easy to consume, addictive by design, tasty in the moment but harmful over time, its origins a black box of unknown processes, the brightly colored product bearing no resemblance to the real-world ingredients, an idealized form of what is inherently imperfect, untethered from the natural world. As with many others, the catalyst for my exploration was a life-threatening medical crisis that did not have a specific cause. This led me to wonder if our entire way of life is like an ultra-processed snack: tasty but not healthy, edible but stripped of the nutrients we need to be healthy, addictive by design. Introduction (free) The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $20, (Kindle $9.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) audiobook, Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF) 
What if the policies to accelerate growth are no longer working because our fix for every problem--growth at any cost--is failing? We're told Progress is inevitable as a result of technology, but everyday life is getting harder, not easier--the opposite of Progress, what I call Anti-Progress.
What if the real source of the unraveling is far deeper than economics or politics? What if the problem is what we see as the inevitable destiny of humanity--Progress--is actually a modern mythology, disconnected from the real-world consequences of growth for growth's sake? We indignantly reject that Progress is a mythology, but our need for mythology hasn't gone away because we've mastered technology; we've created a modern mythology of technology that is heedless of its own consequences. To truly progress, we need a new mythology aligned to 21st century realities. Read the Introduction and first chapter for free
Recent entries: Hell Hath No Fury Like a Rogue AI Agent Scorned August 14, 2026 While We Focused on Fripperies, the Foundations Have Rotted Away August 12, 2026 AI and the Delusions of Increasing Productivity August 10, 2026 I'm Asking You to Support My Work This Month August 6, 2026 The Joyless Pantomime of Optimizing Ennui August 5, 2026 The Joys and Tragedies of Naivete August 3, 2026 Get the Flock Out of Here July 29, 2026 Driving Big Brother July 27, 2026 Who Will Solve Our Real Problem--The US is a Neofeudal Autocracy July 22, 2026 The Conflicts Brewing in America's Ten Classes July 20, 2026 AI Is the Apex of Ultra-Processed Life July 16, 2026 Offload Risks onto the Bottom 90% and Immiseration Follows July 13, 2026
Without Subsidies, AI Is Unaffordable
July 8, 2026
Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency. All contributors are listed below in acknowledgement of my gratitude.
Mastery requires reading and doing.
Of Two Minds Site Links home Musings Reports my books archives books/films policies/disclosures social media/search Aphorisms How to Subscribe/ Contribute original music/songs my definition of success mobile site (Blogspot) HUGE GIANT BIG FAT DISCLAIMER: Nothing on this site should be construed as investment advice or guidance. It is not intended as investment advice or guidance, nor is it offered as such.... (read more) WHY EMAIL TO THIS SITE IS READ BUT MAY NOT BE ACKNOWLEDGED: Regrettably, I am so sorely pressed for time and energy that I am unable to respond to the vast majority of emails. Please know I read all emails, but I can only devote a very limited number of hours to this blog and all correspondence.... Subscribe to the Weekly Musings Reports Subscribers enable Of Two Minds to post free content. Without your financial support, the free content would disappear for the simple reason that I cannot keep body and soul together on my meager book sales alone. Your financial support is very much appreciated. Subscribers ($7/mo) and those who have contributed $70 or more annually receive weekly exclusive Musings Reports ($70/year is about $1.35 a week). Each weekly Musings Report offers five features: 1. Exclusive essay on an extraordinarily diverse range of insightful topics 2. Summary of the blog this week 3. Best thing that happened to me this week 4. What's on the Bookshelf 5. From Left Field (a curated selection of interesting links) There are four easy ways to subscribe: Substack, Patreon, US Mail and Paypal: How to Subscribe / Contribute to Of Two Minds Sample topics and what subscribers are saying about the Musings Thank you very much for supporting oftwominds.com with your subscription or contribution.
Extra-Special Bonus Aphorisms:
"There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity." (Douglas MacArthur) "We are what we repeatedly do." (Aristotle) "Do the thing and you shall have the power." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." (E.F. Schumacher, via Tom R.) "He who will not risk cannot win." (John Paul Jones) "When we drink coffee, ideas march in like the army." (Honore de Balzac) "Progress is not possible without deviation." (Frank Zappa, via Richard Metzger) "Victory favors those who take pains." (amat victoria curam) "The man who has a garden and a library has everything." (Cicero, via Lee Bentley) "A healthy homecooked family meal and a home garden are revolutionary acts." (CHS) "Do you know what amazes me more than anything else? The impotence of force to organize anything." (Napoleon Bonaparte) "The way of the Tao is reversal" Or "Reversal is the movement of Tao." (Lao Tzu) "Chance favours the prepared mind." (Louis Pasteur) "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." (Winston Churchill) "Where there is ruin, there is hope for treasures." (Rumi) "The realm of gratitude is boundless." (CHS, 11/25/15) "History doesn't have a reverse gear." (CHS, 12/22/15) Smith's Law of Conservation of Risk: Every sustained action has more than one consequence. Some consequences will appear positive for a time before revealing their destructive nature. Some consequences will be intended, some will not. Some will be foreseeable, some will not. Some will be controllable, some will not. Those that are unforeseen and uncontrollable will trigger waves of other unforeseen and uncontrollable consequences. (July 8, 2014)(thanks to Lew G. for retitling the idea.) Smith's Neofeudalism Principle #1: If the citizenry cannot replace a kleptocratic authoritarian government and/or limit the power of the financial Aristocracy at the ballot box, the nation is a democracy in name only. The Smith Corollary to Metcalfe's Law (The Network Effect): the value of the network is created not just by the number of connected devices/users but by the value of the information and knowledge shared by users in sub-networks and in the entire network. (CHS, 4/6/16) My Credo of Liberation: I no longer care if the power centers of our society--the distant, fortified castles of our financial feudal system--are changed by my actions, for I am liberated by the act of resistance. I am no longer complicit in perpetuating fraudulent feudalism and the pathology of concentrated power. I no longer covet signifiers of membership in the Upper Caste that serves the plutocracy. I am liberated from self-destructive consumerist-State financialization and the delusion that debt servitude and obedience to sociopathological Elites serve my self-interests. (Thank you, Klaus-Peter L., for reminding me) "We've become a culture of excuses rather than solutions: solutions always require sustained effort and discipline." (CHS 4/9/16) "Fraud as a way of life caters an extravagant banquet of consequences." (CHS 4/14/16) "Creativity = problem solving = value creation." (CHS 6/4/16) "Truth is powerful because it is the core dynamic of solving problems." (CHS 7/21/17) "We live in a system of human emotions that masquerades as a science (economics)." (CHS 1/1/18) "Always remember, your focus determines your reality." (George Lucas) "Diversity is for poor people. Sameness is for the successful." (GFB) "When power dissipates suddenly, it dissipates completely." (CHS 7/14/19) "Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves." (Henry David Thoreau) "Markets cannot price in the value of non-monetized natural assets such as diverse ecosystems." (CHS 7/14/19) "Magical thinking isn't optimism, it is folly." CHS 1/3/22) "Tune in (to self-reliance), drop out (of hyper-consumerism and debt-serfdom) and turn on (to relocalizing capital and agency)." (CHS 1/5/22) "The path to everything you desire starts here: like yourself as you are right now." (CHS 11/20/22) "There are only two signals: how many essentials you produce and share and if you're consuming less with better results. Everything else is noise." (CHS 12/17/22) "Liberation is no longer needing any confirmation or feedback from others or the world for one's sense of self. Wealth, fame, recognition, admiration, praise, prestige, approval, sainthood, martyrdom, success: none are needed, none are desired." (CHS 12/26/22) "When fame, wealth, prestige, status and glory are out of reach, you're free to pursue other more valuable things." (CHS 2/6/22) "It is the sacred duty of every activist who seeks to better their community to grow and share as much life-giving food as is humanly possible." (CHS 6/15/23) "Being anonymous, gray and unknown is the ideal state of freedom." (CHS 3/15/24) "We seem to have entered a world of anti-leisure and anti-productivity in which the unpaid shadow work demanded to keep all the complicated digital bits in motion obliterate our leisure and productivity." CHS (5/22/24) "It is axiomatic that failing systems work the best just before they fail catastrophically." Ray W. "Looking younger is mere technique; thinking younger demands creativity." CHS (10/16/24) "Tell me what's taboo and I'll tell you the truths that threaten the status quo." CHS (12/15/24) "This is the core of the Attention Economy: the ultimate addiction is the addiction to ourselves." CHS (1/28/25) "If You Seek the Truth, Look for What's Taboo." CHS (7/18/25) "My definition of self-reliance: the less you need, the easier it is to get what you need." CHS (7/26/25) "Mastery requires reading and doing." CHS (7/28/25) "The replacement of authentic value, quality, agency, choice, trust, legitimacy and experience with self-serving facsimiles is the key dynamic of Ultra-Processed Life, my term for the present-day human condition." CHS (8/12/25) "Ultra-Processed Life replaces an authentic experience with a synthetic, simulated, commoditized, highly profitable version that's superficially attractive but destructive over the long term." CHS (8/12/25) "What we see everywhere is the replacement of authentic things--including democracy--with synthetic facsimiles designed to maintain the illusion of choice and value." CHS (8/12/25) "Sometimes certainty is the enemy we don't even see and uncertainty is our most faithful ally." CHS (9/20/25) "Sanitized, homogenized, synthesized Ultra-Processed Life isn't more fun; it's just more profitable." CHS (4/6/26) "AI is ultra-processed cognition." CHS (4/6/26) |
|
||||||||||
|
© Copyright Notice All original images (Drawings and Photographs), text (essays, books and works of fiction), audio and video recordings, musical compositions, graphic design, graphic design elements and HTML coding on this site are the copyrighted work of Charles Hugh Smith unless otherwise credited or noted. They are published as information for the private use of site visitors, and any reproduction or redistribution of this content or coding in any media in any format or distribution channel (text, audio, video/film, web) without the written permission of the copyright holder is strictly prohibited. All rights in all media reserved globally. I am honored if you link to any post, provided you credit the site and author and link back to this site.
Terms of Service:
All content on this blog is provided by Trewe LLC for informational purposes only. The owner of this blog makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this site or found by following any link on this site. The owner will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information nor for the availability of this information. The owner will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. These terms and conditions of use are subject to change at anytime and without notice.
RE: European Union AI Act, and Our Use of Generative AI Tools and Agents Policy
Audio files generated by text-to-audio transcription tools are identified as such.
Our Privacy Policy:
PRIVACY NOTICE FOR EEA INDIVIDUALS
Notice of Compliance with
The California Consumer Protection Act
Regarding Cookies:
Our Commission Policy:
|
|
|
|||||
| home email me (no promise of response, sorry, here's why) mirror site | |||||
