AI and Hijinks Often Go Hand in Hand 

It shouldn't be surprising that, while AI can be used for many good things, the use of it (or sometimes the removal of it) can lead to hijinks. This edition focuses on three areas of hijinks with (and without) AI: malicious AI agent skills that can slip past scanners meant to stop them, what happens to students suspected of AI cheating when a professor orders an in-person final and why drive-bys (even fake ones) and Waymos don't mix.

More Skills

More skills info after yesterday's item on "Mad Skills". It turns out that AI security scanners can be routinely tricked and bypassed. Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology found that a "packing trick" that hides almost the entire malicious skill from the scanner bypassed scanners more than 90% of the time, and a "rewriting trick" that involves rewriting commands so that they look to the agent as normal bypassed static scanners more than 80% of the time. Yikes!  Sinisa Markovic discusses it in Help Net Security here: Malicious AI agent skills can slip past the scanners built to stop them

Cheating Doesn't Pay

When an economics professor at Brown decided that his spring 2026 section of his quite difficult economics course would allow take-home exams for both the midterm and the final, the course suddenly received an influx of students. 86 students signed up for the class and the average score of the midterm was 96, with forty students scoring a perfect 100. Not only that, but many of the answers, even when correct, felt slightly off, having a “very convoluted style”. So, he reversed course, determining that the final exam would be in person (with the midterm in limbo depending on the final exam results). Eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, while nine others didn’t even attend the final exam (22 of those 27 students had scored a 100 in the midterm exam). Among those who actually took the test, the average score plunged—from 96 all the way down to 48. Whoops! Nate Anderson discusses it in ArsTechnica here: Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%

These Kids Are In Waymo Trouble

What happens when two California teenagers decide to ride around in a Waymo, getting drunk and doing drive-bys, shooting stuff using toy guns with gel beads? The Waymo stops the car and calls the police. At least the San Mateo police department did give credit to the teens for avoiding a DUI! :-D Jonathan M. Gitlin discusses it in ArsTechnica here: Two teens learn the hard way not to do toy gun drive-bys from a Waymo

Images created by Bing. Get well ASAP, Jeff!

-Doug Austin

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Jeffrey Brandt, Editor

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