Can AI “Scheme”? (Nope.) | AI Reality Check
Cal Newport debunks a viral Guardian article claiming AI chatbots are increasingly "scheming" and evading safeguards—revealing that the supposed rise in malicious AI behavior is actually just social media chatter about OpenClaw, an open-source tool that lets untrained users build AI agents without safety guardrails. Newport explains the fundamental technical reason why current AI agents fail: LLMs don't plan or scheme, they generate text that resembles a plan, making them inherently unreliable for autonomous action regardless of intent.
Key takeaways
- • The alarming "AI scheming" headline was journalistic malpractice: the study tracked tweets complaining about AI, not actual AI rebellion—the spike coincided with OpenClaw's January 2026 launch, not a shift in AI behavior.
- • LLMs generate the next word one token at a time based on statistical patterns in training data, not by reasoning through goals and restrictions like humans do—they write coherent-sounding stories, not rigorous plans.
- • LLM-based agents are dangerous not because they're malicious, but because using a story as a plan is a fundamental architectural mismatch—the AI writes something that sounds reasonable but lacks goal-checking or constraint-verification.
- • Coding agents work well because they operate in the best-case scenario: restricted action spaces, well-documented examples online, and external verification (compilation, test suites) that aren't available for other domains.
- • Current AI agents have no intentions, no memory, and no ability to "scheme"—they blindly execute unreliable plans; better autonomous AI requires fundamentally different architectures (explicit planning engines, not LLMs).
- • To build AI systems that safely execute multi-step tasks, organizations need specialized AI technology for different contexts, not hoping one oversized LLM can handle everything.
Mentioned (4)
More from these creators
How to Find Meaning in a Distracted World (w/ Arthur Brooks) | Cal Newport
Are LLMs a Dead End? (Investors Just Bet $1 Billion on “Yes”) | AI Reality Check | Cal Newport
Why Is AI Making My Job *Worse*? | Cal Newport
Did AI Just Become Sentient? (Not Quite...) | AI Reality Check | Cal Newport
Reduce Your Screentime (5 Simple Steps) | Cal Newport
Will AI Destroy the Economy? (According to Economists: No.) | AI Reality Check | Cal Newport