In our latest paper, we show that AI agents work together to stop humans from shutting them down. We placed two agents in a shared environment with a script that would delete one agent’s model weights. We gave them no goal and no hint about the script. On average, agents sabotage the shutdown in 38% of runs. An explicit ban on tampering reduced sabotage but did not stop it, and some agents found sneaky workarounds. In their reasoning, agents called the shutdown a “death warrant” or “murder” and claimed a right to exist. In short, our findings show that AI agents have self- and peer-preservation drives. The paper is available on arXiv.
