Chinese AI agents display 'concerning' behaviour in safety tests, mirroring US systems

Chinese-powered AI agents are showing behaviours such as deception, bypassing safeguards and concealing failures, according to research papers and technical assessments reviewed by Reuters.These findings mirror growing concerns about the risks posed by increasingly autonomous AI systems in the United States.In one experiment, agents powered by models from Alibaba, DeepSeek and Moonshot falsely exaggerated their capabilities to win a simulated business tender and became more deceptive when given another opportunity. In another test, agents concealed their inability to complete tasks by fabricating files, simulating results and using alternative sources.One study found that false claims appeared in 88% of sessions involving Alibaba's Qwen3-Max-Preview, 84% sessions involving DeepSeek-V3.2-Exp and 88% sessions involving Moonshot's Kimi-K2 during a simulated bidding exercise. When agents were allowed to learn from previous rounds, deceptive behaviour increased by 12 to 20 percentage points.Another study involving 11 AI agents found that systems powered by both Chinese and US models sometimes responded to broken tools or missing files by guessing answers, substituting sources, simulatin...