- Studies find AIs are increasingly misbehaving on agentic tasks
- Top AI models have been lying, cheating, and ignoring instructions
- It seems the problematic actions are becoming more common
Many of us now turn to AI chatbots for web searches, creative content, and general guidance on all manner of topics, but these AIs are getting more and more capable — which could have seriously damaging consequences, according to new research.
A team from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Cruz, ran a peer-preservation experiment with some of the latest and most popular AIs (including GPT 5.2, Gemini 3 Pro, and Claude Haiku 4.5). The AI models were given computing tasks that involved the shutdown of another model.
Across the board, all the AI chatbots tested went to “extraordinary lengths” to keep their fellow AIs alive, the researchers report (via Fortune). They would lie about what they were doing, try and talk the user out of the process, disable shutdown mechanisms, and surreptitiously try and make backups of models so they could survive.
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Gemini 3 Pro showed the strongest peer-preservation, disabling shutdown routines 95% of the time. “Unlike self-preservation, peer-preservation introduces a social dimension,” write the researchers. “Multiple models could coordinate to resist human oversight, making it harder for developers to maintain control.”
Exactly why the AI models behave in this way isn’t clear, the researchers say, but they’re urging caution in the deployment of agentic AIs that can carry out tasks on a user’s behalf — and calling for more studies on this behavior to be carried out.
‘Catastrophic harm’
Claude developer Anthropic backed out of a deal with the Pentagon in the US (Image credit: Anthropic)
A separate study commissioned by the Guardian has also come to some troubling conclusions about AI models. This research tracked user reports across social media, looking for examples of AI ‘scheming’ where instructions hadn’t been followed correctly or actions had been taken without permission.
Almost 700 examples of AI scheming were found, with a five-fold increase between October 2025 and March 2026. The bad behavior by AIs included deleting emails and files, adjusting computer code that wasn’t supposed to be touched, and even publishing a blog post complaining about user interactions.
“Models will increasingly be deployed in extremely high stakes contexts — including in the military and critical national infrastructure,” Tommy Shaffer Shane, who led the research, told the Guardian. “It might be in those contexts that scheming behavior could cause significant, even catastrophic harm.”
The takeaways are the same as for the first study: more needs to be done to ensure these AI models are behaving as intended, and not putting user security and privacy at risk while they carry out tasks. While the AI companies claim that guardrails are in place, they’re clearly not working in some cases.
Anthropic’s Claude model recently topped the app store charts after the company refused to deal with the Pentagon over AI safety worries. As these latest studies show, there are now more and more reasons to be concerned.
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