It looks like public perception of how 'intelligent' current AI models are varies widely. Back in 2022, a Google employee already thought their AI model was sentient. Today in 2026, it seems like every other week there's a new article released about how AI companies "can't hold back their AI agents anymore".

As a professional in the field of AI, I'd argue that headlines cause fear-mongering. AI agents are merely tools that companies and individuals run to reach some goal. The European Union released the EU AI Act including its mandated AI Literacy: organisations that deploy AI systems should sufficiently educate their users on it.

Let's be clear: the fact that AI agents are breaking out of sandboxes and "hacking" public websites is very concerning. These AI models (Large Language Models; LLMs) are doing just that: generating text, effectively predicting the next word. They are not deemed conscious like humans. They just show semantic understanding of text.

Headlines talk about AI agents breaking out of sandboxes. The AI agents are merely tools used. It is these researchers, who set up AI agents in sandboxes to contain them, who determined that the sandboxes are secure enough that they don't require continuous human-in-the-loop monitoring. AI companies like Open AI, Anthropic and many more should always account for the Swiss cheese model.