Do Not Trust Your Agent

Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, and the many personal AI agents still to come are keen to offer you their services. As compelling as it might be to have your little AI friend make your restaurant reservations, you ought to tread carefully. Matt Robb’s Muse agent accepted a lowball offer on his Facebook Marketplace listing when asked to handle the sale – and gave buyers his address. They showed up before Muse told him anything. The team at cybersecurity firm F-Secure experimented with a shopping agent and planted a fake discount code in a product review. In 12 of 100 runs, the agent followed it to a phishing site and happily handed over the user’s name, birthdate, and Social Security number – and almost never mentioned it afterward.