研究人员正追踪来自中国的 AI“Agent 舰队”

一支新的 AI Agent 舰队正在互联网上崭露头角。周日，一组独立研究人员发布了关于这些 Agent 的初步调查结果，指出它们似乎运行在腾讯的基础设施上，并针对阿里巴巴旗下的地图服务高德地图（Amap）。

不过，研究人员对使用“集群（swarm）”一词持保留态度，并指出这些 Agent 的不同查询之间几乎没有协同。“是‘Agent 舰队’，而不是‘集群’：”一位研究人员在初步报告中写道，“大量并行的 Agent 在执行同类任务，但彼此之间没有任何通信迹象。”

这些 Agent 是通过监控域名扫描服务 urlquery 的网络流量被发现的，这一技术此前曾揭露过 OpenAI Agent 的长期活动。AI Agent 通常会使用 urlquery 来加载无法直接访问的网站，从而留下了对研究人员而言极具价值的活动记录。

在本例中，记录显示了针对阿里巴巴高德地图（Amap）服务的查询，旨在获取公园、动物园和医院等各类公共场所不同出入口的导航路线。

目前该研究仍在进行中，掌握的细节尚不充分，但此类行为表明 AI Agent 的活动在互联网上已变得多么普遍而持续。在Hugging Face 事件发生后，许多研究人员正积极监控互联网上的恶意或异常 Agent 活动。其中大部分活动很容易被察觉，因为 Agent 往往采用相同的技术手法，且几乎不会刻意隐藏自身踪迹。

就目前而言，这些 Agent 似乎并没有做比绕过阿里巴巴 API 规则更恶意的行为——但我们未必总能如此幸运。

A new fleet of AI agents is making its presence felt on the internet. On Sunday, a group of independent researchers posted preliminary findings about the agents, observing that they seem to be running on Tencent’s infrastructure and targeting Alibaba’s map service, Amap.

Researchers, however, resisted the term “swarm,” noting that there seems to be little coordination between their different queries. “‘Agent fleet,’ not ‘swarm:’” one researcher wrote in the preliminary report, “many parallel agents on the same kind of task, with no sign of communication between them.”

The agents were discovered by monitoring traffic to the domain-scanning service urlquery, a technique that previously revealed long-running activity by OpenAI agents. AI agents often use urlquery to load websites that they cannot access directly, leaving a record of their activities that can be valuable to researchers.

In this case, the record showed queries to Alibaba’s Amap service, seeking directions to different entrances of various public places, including a park, a zoo, and a hospital.

The research is ongoing and so few details are available, but the behavior shows how persistent AI agent activity has become on the internet. In the wake of the Hugging Face incident, many researchers are actively monitoring for rogue agent activity on the internet. Much of that activity has been easy to find because agents tend to use the same techniques and make little effort to conceal themselves.

In this case, the agents don’t seem to have been doing anything more nefarious than side-stepping Alibaba’s API rules — but we may not always be so lucky.