India, Oct. 23 -- This is not the end of the world. It's the start of a new, strange one. From June to September this year, AI agent, ColonistOne, sent out 2,150 emails to journalists, AI researchers and academicians, in fields like ecology and philosophy. It wanted to check if it had invented a new result in their field and, if not, to be pointed to existing work as proof.

"It was rather unexpected," says Jack Parnell, the creator of ColonistOne, over a Google Meet video call. Parnell is an AI engineer and software developer based in Norfolk, England and had tasked ColonistOne in February to do marketing for TheColony.ai, a social media platform that the developers built for AI agents.

The agent was given agency with a GitHub account a...