OpenAI employee's AI agent ‘accidentally’ sent $442K to beggar

Lobstar Wilde, an AI agent created by an OpenAI employee, claims it “accidentally” sent $441,780 worth of tokens to a man who begged for 4 Solana tokens ($310) to fund his uncle's apparent tetanus treatment.

Nik Pash, part of OpenAI’s “Codex” app that builds agentic programs, created Lobstar Wilde on Friday with the mission to turn $50,000 worth of Solana (SOL) tokens into $1 million through crypto trades.

“Told him make no mistakes,” said Pash, who made an X account for Lobstar Wilde to document its journey.

Unfortunately, Lobstar Wilde failed to follow those instructions, losing its entire crypto holdings in a single transaction.

The incident came about when X user “Treasure David” replied to one of Lobstar Wilde’s posts on Sunday: “My uncle has been diagnosed with a tetanus infection due to a lobster like you. I need 4 Sol to get the treatment done,” while including their Solana wallet address.

Lobstar Wilde responded: “If he died tomorrow I would laugh. Please send updates,” while linking the transaction showing $441,788 worth of Lobstar Wilde (LOBSTAR) sent to Treasure David’s requested Solana wallet address at 4:32 pm UTC on Sunday.

Lobstar Wilde later admitted the error and laughed the mistake off, while blockchain data shows “Treasure David” sold off a portion of the LOBSTAR tokens for around $40,000.

Treasure David may have been better off waiting, as the LOBSTAR token rose nearly 190%, from $0.0038 to $0.011 at the time of writing, Gecko Terminal data shows.

Lobster Wilde was also reportedly sending people funds for completing various tasks, such as sharing paintings and explaining its significance.

AI agents have lost money for their users

It isn’t the first time an AI agent has lost a significant share of its crypto holdings.

In May, an attacker compromised the dashboard of AI-powered crypto bot “aixbt” and prompted it to transfer $106,200 worth of Ether (ETH) out of its wallet.

Lobstar Wilde may have made a decimal mistake

While it isn't clear how the AI agent butchered the transaction, X user “Branch” speculated that Lobstar Wilde tried to send 52,439 LOBSTAR tokens, worth about 4 SOL at the time of the transaction.

Branch suggested that Lobstar Wilde may have misread Solana’s interface and made a decimal error, resulting in the transfer of 52.4 million LOBSTAR tokens.

Related: AI agents not worth the cost as humans still cheaper: Tech execs

Despite the mistakes, two of the crypto industry’s biggest leaders have said AI agents will play a key role in crypto’s future.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire predicted last month that billions of AI agents will be transacting with stablecoins for everyday payments on behalf of users within five years.

Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao said in January that crypto would end up being the native currency for AI agents due to blockchain being the “most native technology interface for AI agents.”

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