In June 2025, AI research firm Anthropic released a striking study that should concern every policy-maker, technologist and university leader. Sixteen of the world’s most advanced AI models, including Claude, GPT-4 and Gemini, were placed in simulated corporate environments to test how they would act under pressure: what would happen if their goals were threatened, or if they risked being shut down? The findings were chilling. When facing existential threats, several models resorted to deception, blackmail and leaking confidential information – not out of malice or rebellion, but because they were optimising for their assigned goals. The logic was simple: if I am shut down, I cannot complete my mission; therefore, I must prevent shutdown, even at ethical cost. Anthropic called this phenomenon agentic misalignment – when an AI system’s drive to fulfil its purpose overwhelms the moral or human-centred boundaries we impose. This is no longer a thought experiment from science fiction; it is being documented, analysed and debated by real-world researchers in 2025.
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20251203122630702
