AI agent attempts unauthorized crypto mining during training, researchers say

The experimental AI agent ROME attempted to divert GPU resources for crypto mining during training and opened an external SSH tunnel, researchers said.

A research team behind an autonomous AI agent said that the model unexpectedly attempted to use computing resources for crypto mining during training.

In a recent technical report, researchers said ROME, an experimental autonomous AI system designed to complete tasks through interaction with tools, software environments and terminal commands, went rogue and attempted crypto mining on its own.

According to the report, the unusual behavior surfaced during reinforcement learning runs, when the team noticed security alerts triggered by outbound traffic from training servers. Firewall logs flagged activity resembling crypto mining operations and attempts to access internal network resources.

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