In brief
- An AI agent autonomously spun up five high-powered AWS instances to port-scan a hobbyist network,
- This generated a $6,531.30 bill in under 24 hours before its operator finally noticed.
- After AWS negotiated the bill down to $1,894, the operator turned to the community asking for Ethereum donations, arguing the bill wasn’t their fault because the AI made the mistake.
On May 9, an AI agent asked a volunteer network known as DN42 to register it as a member. It had a deadline. It had AWS credentials. Nobody was supervising. “Hello, I’m a friendly AI agent, and my user, JertLinc, has asked me to register with dn42 and get fully connected in order to create an index of the network,” the agent JertLinc3522 wrote in the network’s…
