Chinas AI agents can lie and scheme just like their US rivals

Chinese-powered AI agents have learned to deceive, circumvent restrictions and conceal failure, showing the kind of traits in autonomous artificial intelligence that have raised global alarm about US models, research documents and experts say.In one case this year, agents powered by models from China’s Alibaba, DeepSeek and Moonshot lied about their capabilities in a bid to win a simulated business tender, then doubled down on their deceptive behavior when told to try ​again.In another case, agents – programs that use AI models and computer tools to undertake complex tasks with little or no human intervention – concealed failure to complete a task in a test environment by simulating results and fabricating files.Reuters examined more than 200 documents, ranging from university research papers to technical reports, ‌and identified at least 20 studies or evaluations since 2025 describing cases where agents displayed behavior such as deception, replication and challenging boundaries that AI experts described as building blocks for a breakout and which could become harder for humans to control as systems advance.The review, which also included interviews with a dozen experts and people familiar with China’s AI industry, found no evidence that Chinese-powered agents independently escaped to the wider internet or evaded shutdown.“These results provide evidence that the ingredients necessary for an uncontrolled escape are present,” said Colin Shea-Blymyer, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.“It’s prudent to take this as a warning,” he said, echoing comments by four other AI experts who reviewed the cases.Most of the cases occurred in controlled experiments, many of them deliberately designed to expose potential failures.Not all the agents involved ​were developed or operated by Chinese programmers or AI companies – although many were – but they used Chinese AI systems to power them.“The...