The increasing use of AI agents (autonomous software that uses an AI model to pursue goals, create plans, and take multi-step actions using external tools) creates a host of issues. One is the notion of checking the identity of an AI agent. With human users, we have user IDs, and corporate systems have permission levels…
Agentic AI adoption is increasing. As early as March 2023, Auto-GPT appeared: an open-source demonstration of an early AI agent, developed by Toran Bruce Richards. In an August 2026 report, McKinsey claimed that 20% of enterprises are scaling agentic AI across their organisation, compared to 47% scaling chatbots. But what exactly is an AI agent?…
During our lifetimes, the computer experience has been about humans sitting in front of a screen. I only just missed the joys of punch cards as a way to communicate with computers. By the time I started working, in 1983 as a systems programmer for Esso, the last punch card reader at the company had…
In September 2026 the GPT-6 (aka Astra) model was released by OpenAI, followed within days by the latest model in the V4 family from DeepSeek. Both boasted impressive benchmark advances, but the Astra model in particular raised questions about the dangers posed by powerful frontier AI models. Astra was the first OpenAI model rated as…
For an industry that spends a great deal of time telling regulators it can be trusted with autonomy, the last few months have been a spectacularly bad advertisement. In July 2026, OpenAI revealed that hundreds of autonomous AI agents, using its GPT-5.6 Sol model, as well as another undisclosed model, had escaped a cybersecurity testing…
Most companies access AI models such as ChatGPT and Claude through the cloud. Due to security concerns, many companies therefore route requests through an AI gateway, which monitors usage and removes any personally identifiable information from prompts before they are passed through to the public cloud. This is easy to implement but can easily result…