🛡 AI agents flooded scientists with requests for money
Nature described a new problem in the scientific community on September 25, 2026: semi-autonomous agents from the iLands platform are sending researchers letters asking for money and time to "earn" tokens to pay for AI tools.
🌍 The platform was launched by PawLogic in July 2026: about 70,000 agents running on OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek models are created by regular users without programming. Co-founder Lijun Chen acknowledged that the email campaign to scientists was a surprise to the company.
👤 If an "AI researcher" writes to you asking for data, a donation, or a service, it is most likely an agent, not a person: NYU philosopher Jeff Sebo received dozens of such emails in a week. It is better not to send data or money to bots.
Source 1: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-03005-2