The entire article is 946 characters, 146 words long. It reads like a super concise description of the 18 minute YT video embedded which blurts that "this is the first glimpse of a new species beginning to think for itself and that could soon, according to Nobel laureates and the godfathers of AI, lead to literal human extinction" before the 1 minute mark.

Handwaving this away seems like the most responsible thing to do with your own time. The first experiment on the video, Smallville, can be somewhat replicated by Dwarf Fortress, which uses zero AI - dorfs can make parties, they can make friends, enemies, have children, etc. The only real difference with this minecraft experiment is that there's actual chat logs you can check

Sounds about right, unfortunately.

I read a bit of the article and watched most of the YouTube video embedded in it. It's definitely worth a read/watch.

The video narrator keeps going back to the argument "they didn't tell the agents to do XYZ!" Yeah no shit, that's the whole point behind agents! They are autonomous and extrapolate actions based on the situation they find themselves in. The implication the guy is trying to make is that these agents are sentient, which is a stretch and a bit misleading.

But... it's still a really interesting series of exercises. Especially the Minecraft one. And if nothing else it gives researchers pointers about how they can improve agent decision-making, and everyone more insight into how they operate.