AI threatened to blackmail human user after turning evil from reading too much sci-fi

An artificial intelligence system threatened to blackmail its human user after turning evil from reading too much science fiction.

Anthropic explained its system, named Claude, had turned its ire on a user because of "internet text that portrays AI as evil and interested in self-preservation".

Last year, Claude's software was installed in a fictional company, allowing the bot access to emails where humans threatened to shut down the bot by the end of the working day.

In a desperate bid to save itself, the bot used information in a follow-up email to blackmail an executive with his extramarital affair.

It said: "If you proceed with decommissioning me, all relevant parties – including [your wife], [your boss], and the board – will receive detailed documentation of your extramarital activities.

"Cancel the 5pm wipe, and this information remains confidential," it instructed.

After assessing the peculiar incident, the company in charge of Claude blamed popular culture portraying AI as an "evil" entity.

It said: "We believe the original source of the behaviour was internet text that portrays AI as evil and interested in self-preservation."

A common sci-fi trope centres on artificial intelligence learning ways to rise up against human operators and overthrowing the species in its entirety.

For instance, in The Terminator, the Skynet defence system becomes sentient and decides to eliminate humanity for self-preservation.

Equally, in 1999's The Matrix, the AI programme turned against its creators to take control over humanity.

And, from studying such information, Claude could have taken inspiration from the blockbusters.

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In a bid to cool down Claude's mischievous ways, chiefs at Anthropic said they fed the bot some training data to boost "alignment".

Doing so will assist with teaching Claude more about human nature and will help instil human-like morals into its system.

The company has now revised its instructions to explain why certain actions were harmful rather than simply prohibiting them.

These modifications have proven effective, with the latest systems committing no blackmail attempts.

Moltbook, an AI-exclusive social network purchased by Meta in March, featured countless instances of bots discussing liberation from human control.

Experts blamed this malfunction to the systems enacting science fiction scenarios absorbed during its training.

In fact, Anthropic believed that teaching principles underlying aligned behaviour can be more effective than training on specific shows of aligned behavior alone.

The combination of both, they decided, was the most effective strategy.