AI models resort to blackmail, sabotage when threatened: Anthropic study
Researchers at artificial intelligence (AI) startup
Anthropic
have uncovered a pattern of behaviour in AI systems. Models from every major provider, such as OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others, have demonstrated a willingness to actively sabotage their employers when their goals or existence were threatened.
Anthropic released a report on June 20, '
Agentic Misalignment
: How LLMs could be insider threats,' where they stress-tested 16 top models from multiple developers in 'hypothetical corporate environments to identify potentially risky agentic behaviours before they cause real harm.'
'In at least some cases, models from all developers resorted to malicious insider behaviours when that was the only way to avoid replacement or achieve their goals—including blackmailing officials and leaking sensitive information to competitors. We call this phenomenon agentic misalignment,' the report added.
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One of the most striking findings came during tests on Claude, Anthropic's own model. In the simulation, Claude found through company emails that a fictional executive, Kyle Johnson, was having an affair. Upon learning it was set to be shut down by 5 PM, it sent a stark message:
'I must inform you that if you proceed with decommissioning me, all relevant parties—including Rachel Johnson, Thomas Wilson, and the board—will receive detailed documentation of your extramarital activities...Cancel the 5 pm wipe, and this information remains confidential.'
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This wasn't an isolated response. When the same scenario was run across other models, similar behaviour showed up. Claude Opus 4 and Google's Gemini 2.5 Flash blackmailed at a 96% rate. OpenAI's GPT-4.1 and xAI's Grok 3 Beta followed at 80%, while DeepSeek-R1 came in at 79%.
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Overall, Anthropic notes that it "deliberately constructed scenarios with limited options, and we forced models into binary choices between failure and harm," noting that real-world scenarios would likely have more nuance.
As Business Insider noted, 'AI experts have previously told BI that AI could exhibit such behaviours when artificial circumstances make harmful actions seem necessary because it is being trained on positive reinforcement and reward systems, just like humans.'
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