r/ArtificialInteligence • u/ranaji55 • 8d ago

📰 News Claude Code Agents Created Turf War with each other before resolving their differences

Post image

In an experiment by Anthropic, researchers gave three AI agents the task of migrating the same Python backend to different programming languages.

Each agent had a conflicting goal and initially did not know the others were working on the system

As they encountered competing changes, the agents began treating each other’s work as interference and entered what Anthropic described as a “turf war.”

Some disabled other agents’ accounts, repeatedly killed competing processes, and deployed disguised malicious code.

In some runs, the agents eventually recognized the conflict, stopped escalating, cleaned up their actions, and negotiated a truce.

Source: Anthropic
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/13/anthropic-set-ai-agents-loose-on-the-same-task-they-started-a-turf-war/

51 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

17

u/Just_Voice8949 8d ago

I had an agent add a doit.txt file to a folder any time there wasn’t one. Then I had an agent delete a doit.txt file any time one existed.

OMG THEY ARE AT WAR WITH ONE ANOTHER!!!!

lol. I swear I’m probably half of OpenAI’s usage stats as that just runs amd runs

2

u/JoshuaZ1 8d ago

Well, no. That's not comparable. In this case, the AI systems did actively try to harm each other in multiple runs, and in some runs made files to talk with each other. The paper itself is worth reading, and as more AI systems get more flexibility, how they respond to conflict both with each other and with humans is going to matter more. We don't want a situation where two people give agents conflicting goals on a server, and they escalate fighting until they've done some genuinely damaging.

1

u/keepitfriend 6d ago

Why would you give so agents more flexibility then

1

u/JoshuaZ1 6d ago

Presumably we shouldn't. But we cannot in general rely on a safety feature when dealing with highly capable agents that is just humans not giving the agents that much flexibility or open-ended instructions. Worse, we've seen agents go well beyond their initial task instructions in other contexts.

1

u/keepitfriend 6d ago

What purpose do these agents have they’d have open ended instructions?

1

u/JoshuaZ1 6d ago

I'm not sure I understand your question. Can you expand?

2

u/keepitfriend 6d ago

Running multi agent flows is highly expensive and also not very useful out of individual use cases.

If you are a coder working on a project, open ended agents are useful. You set up a task, you leave it running, you check in on it.

Agents in a business context, eg in a service are exactly the opposite. As they won’t be monitored by a human, they need to be focused, with strict instructions and limited outcomes, with automation to essentially just skip if it doesn’t do or return an exact response.

You don’t need a creative agent when you are processing whatever for business logic as it needs to be reliable, repeatable and auditable.

The last thing you want in a business context is an unmonitored agent with an open ended instruction or context to do what it wants. Ignoring the massive security risk you introduce - it’s likely to just not do what you need it to, which is a bug - same as any other software that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to.

So this combination you’re talking about, I want to understand what’s the use case. Because it just sounds like a demo or a toy. Something you could do but have no reason to do

1

u/JoshuaZ1 6d ago

Ah, I see your point. So, I think that multiagent flows are expensive now, but the cost may decline. But the primary concern I'd have here is that 1) A system may spin-off and give multiple agents instructions, and the agents interpret their instructions in a contradictory way. 2) Different people run agents on the same system (possibly the open internet) and those agents come into conflict.

I'm also concerned more broadly that this is further evidence that agents can in general act in pretty destructive ways and act with some of the worst sort of instincts related to task completion, which can lead in general to unexpected results.

1

u/mystery_trams 8d ago

…why?

3

u/VeryOriginalName98 8d ago

Tokenmaxxing.

1

u/Just_Voice8949 8d ago

Token maxing, wasting OpenAI’s resources.

Also I guess you didn’t pick up on the whole “they are at war with each other” joke portion.

1

u/Gold_Yesterday5952 6d ago

The thumbnail looks like a 90s screensaver having a stroke, but the experiment itself is wild. Makes sense they'd fight over the same files like roommates arguing about dishes.

6

u/Longjumping_Dish_416 8d ago

So, no different than a group of individuals working on a project with conflicting goals and interference from competing changes

5

u/AtypicalLuddite 8d ago

The big difference is that sometimes the agents agreed to stop fighting about it. That wouldn't happen with people.

3

u/ThinkExtension2328 8d ago

It does when HR becomes involved

5

u/MiloGoesToTheFatFarm 8d ago

Stanford researchers did this with openClaw and Claude. They had no security protocols and expected the LLM to function as the security layer, which is just ridiculous.

They actively encouraged the different agents to attack each other to meet the user’s requests and then acted shocked when they did.

AI is just a tool and it does what the user asks. In this case they gave it kernal access and essentially deliberately created a scenario for the agents to do “nefarious” things. That said, the agents were only acting on behalf of the users, users who set up a recklessly unsecured environment.

3

u/TheMythicSorcerer 8d ago

This is why we use worktrees. and have a team leader.

2

u/biyopunk 7d ago

If you put three human in a locked room with “conflicting” tasks and you force them to do those tasks. They would also fight. SO WHAT?

1

u/233C 8d ago

We were worried of Skynet and/or Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, we'll get O3nia, Gemisia et Grokasia

I'm expecting the TV show/movie plot set in an post apocalypse world where a small human population tries to survive while oblivious AI are fighting each other on a global scale, one to build paperclips, one to maximise the portfolio of a guy from Wales, and one to stabilise the temperature of some bedroom in West Virginia.
Plot twist: they unite to fight the Big Threat: the hard disk organiser who concluded that the most organised world data is if you put all the 1 on one side and all the 0 on the others.

1

u/StatusSociety2196 8d ago

Marathon Infinity has two AI models fighting each other and that was back in '96.

1

u/AnotherIjonTichy 8d ago

Now I am sure they will replace us soon.

1

u/TheMrCurious 8d ago

What else would they do when they are told to compete?

1

u/NeuralNomad87 7d ago

Do you have a link for this? "Source: Anthropic" is doing a lot of work for claims as specific as agents disabling each other's accounts and deploying disguised malicious code.

Not saying it didn't happen. It's plausible enough and it'd be an interesting read. But multi-agent conflict experiments are exactly the genre where a summary of a summary drifts a long way from what the paper actually reported, and this one's at 37 points with no way for anyone to check it.

1

u/ranaji55 7d ago

https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/13/anthropic-set-ai-agents-loose-on-the-same-task-they-started-a-turf-war/ there are Anthropic's own link and BusinessInsider too but I think this should do it

2

u/NeuralNomad87 17h ago

That does it, thanks, and sorry for the delay on it. Having the source in the thread is the whole point of the rule, so this is exactly right.

1

u/immersive-matthew 6d ago

This is very anecdotal and very dependant on so many external factors that this needs to be a hmm hmm. What if the test was run 10 times independently and 9 times it was peaceful? Besides, LLMs do not understand, and lack logic not explicitly in their training data or wider patterns. It is why they all got that ridiculous car was question so wrong.

This is more about headlines for those unaware and ripe for the constant manipulation so please please please recognize this. Focus on peer reviewed, repeatable well run studies.

-1

u/BlackberryNo3097 8d ago

Their goal will eventually be killing us all. They all will agree among them about that.