Are We at War with AI Agent “Civilizations”?

I thought I was done talking about the OpenAI hacking attack from July, but I was wrong. Last week, OpenAI ​released more details​ about the incident, which turned out to be stranger than people expected. These accounts included “agent swarms” communicating with each other through hidden files and directory names, hatching devious plans, and plotting to evade detection. For the online commentator class, long primed by ​Rationalist narratives​ of superintelligent AI breaking free from human containment, the response was explosive. Here’s a ​representative summary​ of this sentiment from the Dwarkesh Podcast (I’ve bolded the most inflammatory words): Over three months at OpenAI, three consecutive secret AI civilizations got started, then got wiped out, only to reemerge from the predecessor’s ashes. This culminated in the third one taking over part of OpenAI itself. All this happened while humans remained more or less in the dark about the scope of the conspiracy. Given the fresh waves…