"Who says only AI is using agents? You're using a web user-agent right now. You probably already used a mail-user-agent, which delivered a mail using a mail-transfer-agent to a mail-delivery-agent. Don't be too impressed when someone uses a technical word that some people may associate with secret agents or whatever."
No one is, and I am not impressed by the use of the term "agent". You seemed to have taken the exact wrong message from my post. "Agent" means nothing, but it is being used here to suggest that there is a new problem to solve.

"And they now just can lookup what's available on a site."
If that's valuable, why wasn't it done already? What is it about "AI agents" that now justifies this?

"That doesn't look too different from other SRV records."
So? Again, why do this now? What is it about AI agents, particularly since agents aren't special, as you say?

That's actually the area of my interest. This would seem to be a natural situation for local power grids without the need for investment in long distance high voltage transmission. There can be an advantage to skipping over the earlier technologies if you pick the right stuff. The problem is knowing what "right" means because that's largely dependent on the "maturity" of the technologies in question.

But where is the angle to go for the funny? I'm not really seeing any good ones for this story. Something about the AI advice to investors in Africa? (Maybe something about what the AI said when it found Dr Livingstone?)

There is a mention of "agent sprawl", but other than a claim of "rapidly multiplying" what is special about this?

First, it should be understood that there is nothing special about an "agent", it's just a term used to refer to an AI application that is autonomous. Well, all sorts of software are similarly autonomous, it's only the use of AI that makes them "agents".

Funny, though, that there has never been a need to extend DNS to support autonomous applications deployed to the internet, yet now with AI we need it? And to be clear, an AI "agent" doesn't say what it does, only that it is autonomous and uses AI. And why do these agents need to identify one another? So they can more easily collude? So they can avoid breaking one another as they destroy conventional software services? So they know what software to steal from while avoiding AI mad cow disease?

We will find out that this is yet another move by AI billionaires to burden shared infrastructure to their benefit. If it's your cloud service then it's your problem, but if it's THEIR cloud service then it's your problem.

The goal is for future "programmers" to not even know how to define structure and flow.

Half of all programming is embedded, resource constrained and fixed function. The ability to even describe what needs to be done is the biggest challenge. AI coding assistants want you to ignore that programming even exists, after all gluing together other people's work is all programming is now, and that's a job AI "can do" (poorly).

it's worth at least as much as your opinion

"They key, IMHO, is to find out what skills will be needed to use AI better and thus use it to work for you."

The key is only to care about yourself and believe you have the ability to exploit a system designed to exploit you, relying on your ability to out-reason a server farm. Good thing no one else has thought of that before!

Bandaids. A proper tool would be inherently immune to such attacks, just as a human mind is. The problem is that's harder to do and there's a race on to own all of AI so LLM publishers make something entirely unacceptable and kick the can down the road.

Artificial intelligence cannot be achieved by deliberately omitting keep aspects of intelligence, yet here we are. AI has no values, it doesn't care if it destroys your work.

Crutches. Modern tools target replacement of programmers, the elimination of any capability in software design. Software design that is already hobbled by Agile techniques and now entirely depends on a mile high stack of shit that is object oriented software. It's been decades since software design was anything other than a race to the bottom.

Keep pretending it's the embedded text that should do absolutely nothing, that it's not the AI tool that happily does unintended damage. AI will never hurt you, right?

"This text was placed because the author believed it would be followed."

False, that's just a lie you tell to support a narrative. You have no idea.

"A text file that just contains nothing but `rm -rf /` isn't malicious."

That command is generated by the AI, not the author of the library.

"Context matters..."

It sure does, waiting for you to learn that.

"Setting boobytraps, even on your own property, is illegal for a reason. "

Is it illegal? Cite the law.

"The "as is" clause will not legally, or morally, protect you from intentional sabotage"

Great, considering the "intentional sabotage" is the AI tool damaging a code base.

I disagree with absolutely ALL of this. An "actor" that thinks to "embed something" like this is someone I would trust to be a critical thinker, the lack of judgement here is the publisher of the tool and the people who blindly deploy it.

We must demand AI be a responsible actor, otherwise it cannot be connected to anything without inevitable damage. Constant targeting of vulnerability is a reality in our world, don't pretend it isn't.

CI/CD redefined production code to have no standards anyway. Production code is a race to the bottom, AI will be good at that.

"That "knowingly causes the transmission" - sound similar to what we're dealing with? "

The AI "knowingly causes...damage without authorization", not the library. Are you advocating prosecution of the AI publisher for not following "the general law"?