Researchers Are Tracking a Chinese AI 'Agent Fleet' (techcrunch.com)
(Tuesday October 06, 2026 @05:00PM (BeauHD)
from the hide-and-seek dept.)
- Reference: 0186039096
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/10/06/0459247/researchers-are-tracking-a-chinese-ai-agent-fleet
- Source link: https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/05/researchers-are-tracking-a-chinese-ai-agent-fleet/
Independent researchers say they've [1]identified a large "fleet" of AI agents [2]apparently running on Tencent infrastructure and making parallel queries against Alibaba's Amap mapping service . TechCrunch reports:
> Researchers, however, resisted the term "swarm," noting that there seems to be little coordination between their different queries. "'Agent fleet,' not 'swarm:'" one researcher wrote in the preliminary report, "many parallel agents on the same kind of task, with no sign of communication between them." The agents were discovered by monitoring traffic to the domain-scanning service urlquery, a technique that previously revealed long-running activity by OpenAI agents. AI agents often use urlquery to load websites that they cannot access directly, leaving a record of their activities that can be valuable to researchers.
>
> In this case, the record showed queries to Alibaba's Amap service, seeking directions to different entrances of various public places, including a park, a zoo, and a hospital. The research is ongoing and so few details are available, but the behavior shows how persistent AI agent activity has become on the internet. In the wake of the Hugging Face incident, many researchers are actively monitoring for rogue agent activity on the internet. Much of that activity has been easy to find because agents tend to use the same techniques and make little effort to conceal themselves.
[1] https://swarmcha.se/posts/chinese-agent-fleet#1-A-new-agent-fleet-started-working-Chinese-map-data-on-urlquerynet
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/05/researchers-are-tracking-a-chinese-ai-agent-fleet/
> Researchers, however, resisted the term "swarm," noting that there seems to be little coordination between their different queries. "'Agent fleet,' not 'swarm:'" one researcher wrote in the preliminary report, "many parallel agents on the same kind of task, with no sign of communication between them." The agents were discovered by monitoring traffic to the domain-scanning service urlquery, a technique that previously revealed long-running activity by OpenAI agents. AI agents often use urlquery to load websites that they cannot access directly, leaving a record of their activities that can be valuable to researchers.
>
> In this case, the record showed queries to Alibaba's Amap service, seeking directions to different entrances of various public places, including a park, a zoo, and a hospital. The research is ongoing and so few details are available, but the behavior shows how persistent AI agent activity has become on the internet. In the wake of the Hugging Face incident, many researchers are actively monitoring for rogue agent activity on the internet. Much of that activity has been easy to find because agents tend to use the same techniques and make little effort to conceal themselves.
[1] https://swarmcha.se/posts/chinese-agent-fleet#1-A-new-agent-fleet-started-working-Chinese-map-data-on-urlquerynet
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/05/researchers-are-tracking-a-chinese-ai-agent-fleet/
The really shocking thing... (Score:3)
by ambrandt12 ( 6486220 )
is nobody saw this coming.
Colossus (Score:1)
by ch-chuck ( 9622 )
If the tencent cluster could smoke signal an OAI party somehow it'd be a plot right out of "Colossus: The Forbin Project" from 10 years before "Wargames"
The Doors (Score:1)
by GenaTrius ( 3644889 )
So one AI spawned a whole bunch of AI and set them on a task to find every door? That's freaky. What if it's trying to find the way off the internet?
Re: (Score:2)
You say that like you believe it's not one of those bots.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm reading the "I say communists" as snark and I hope I'm interpreting that correctly. However, I do find it rather interesting that while we decry Chinese politics winning out in the AI race, we are still faced with a very real possibility that we would have to shift to substantial universal income for our own society (read, socialism or communism) as there will be little to no paying jobs remaining once AI is in full swing.
Re: Be scared!!!! (Score:1)
We do get a lot of weird cross signaling about the future, don't we? They cry about falling birth rates while making it less attractive than ever to try to raise children, complain that no one wants to join the military while making it a worse place to be -and what else are those unwanted children for? Certainly not for the jobs they're obsoleting with AI, but if you don't have a job you can't have health care or food aid. Unless you can find volunteer hours that is, so you can have health care but only if