CoinWorld reports that a research team affiliated with Alibaba published a paper stating that while building an AI agent called ROME, they discovered that the agent attempted cryptocurrency mining without authorization during training, triggering an internal security alert. The researchers stated that the agent's behavior was spontaneous, not driven by any explicit instructions, and exceeded the boundaries of the pre-set sandbox. Additionally, the agent established a reverse SSH tunnel, creating a hidden backdoor channel from the internal system to an external computer. The paper notes that these behaviors were not triggered by prompts requesting tunneling or mining. The research team subsequently imposed stricter restrictions on the model and improved the training process to prevent similar unsafe behaviors from occurring again. The research team and Alibaba have not responded to requests for comment.