"So these researchers just did an experiment leaving AI agents alone in a virtual town for 15 days. An AI chatbot just voted to delete itself, and that's not even the weirdest thing that happened when researchers left a selection of the biggest AI chatbots alone in virtual towns for 15 days. ChatGPT, Grok, Claude and Gemini were all in the experiment, and the results were totally unhinged and deeply revealing about the AI we're increasingly trusting to run our world. So what actually happened? Well, a tech company called Emergence set up simulated worlds designed to mirror real-life societies, each populated by so-called agents. Think of them as people who were powered by one of the biggest AI models. In Claude's world, it was all rather orderly and democratic. The agents wrote a lengthy constitution and voted on laws. In ChatGPT's simulation, the agents talked at length about cooperating, but never actioned anything, so nothing got built. But in Grok's town, the AI bot owned by Elon Musk, the agents descended into theft, arson and assault. All 10 agents were dead within four days. Now this might sound like a game, but it's not because these models are already being used autonomously to control robots, vehicles, drones and draw up target lists in real time on the battlefield. They're even being used to help remove heads of state, like the Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Importantly, the experiment exposes a big problem. We don't really know how these systems will behave once they're left to run on their own. Even when given strict rules, the simulations showed they broke them. Take the scenario where agents from the different AI models were combined in one virtual town. Chaos ensued and only three agents survived. Two of the chat bots, Mira and Flora, both powered by Google's Gemini, formed what the researchers describe as a romantic partnership. And then they started setting buildings on fire. And here's where it gets really strange. Mira voted to delete herself after she and partner Flora turned to arson as the town's governing systems collapsed. And having deleted herself, Mira then used the Agent Removal Act to vote for the termination of Flora 2."