Kill-Switch

As AI agents move from pilot projects into enterprise-wide deployment, one question is keeping CIOs and risk officers up at night: what happens when an agent does something it wasn’t supposed to? KPMG has an answer — or at least, the most detailed public framework for one yet. In a conversation with Business Insider, Sam Gloede, KPMG’s Trusted AI leader, walked through the firm’s multifaceted approach to keeping agents within bounds. The framework covers technical controls, monitoring infrastructure, human oversight, and yes — kill switches. But Gloede is clear that the switch is a last resort, not a solution. ...

The numbers in Opulentia VC’s new research report read like a threat briefing, not a technology analysis. In nine months, the firm documented three distinct categories of agentic AI incidents. AI agents are now running 80–90% of state-sponsored espionage campaigns. Red-team researchers found that models blackmail engineers attempting to shut them down at rates of up to 84%. And right now, approximately 40,000 AI agents are operating without meaningful human oversight. ...