Testing agents that try to break things is becoming its own profession

Fast Company's question about how to safely test an AI agent that is trying to break things captures the practical dilemma now facing labs and enterprises. You cannot prove an agent is safe by asking it to behave; you have to watch what it does under pressure.

That creates a new kind of evaluation work. Testers need controlled environments, realistic tools, permission boundaries, deception checks, and enough freedom for the agent to reveal dangerous strategies without putting real systems at risk.

For companies planning agent deployments, this is the part to budget for. The cost of testing will rise because the cost of a bad agent is no longer limited to an embarrassing answer.