On 23 October 2026, the Faculty of Computing and Informatics (FCI), Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), organized a campus talk titled “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: When Autonomous AI Goes Rogue” at the Auditorium Jabatan Digital, UMS. The event was attended by UMS academic staff, administrative staff both FCI and Jabatan Digital, alongside students from FCI.
The session featured Dr. Mahadi Datuk Hj. Murshidi, Chief AI Officer of Gegentic AI Lab, and was moderated by Dr. Neha Gautam, Senior Lecturer at FCI, UMS.
During the talk, Dr. Mahadi explored the transformative opportunities alongside the emerging risks of autonomous Artificial Intelligence (AI), highlighting cybersecurity threats, governance challenges, and the vital need for human oversight. Drawing on the example of coordinated drone swarms, he illustrated how autonomous systems could pose serious real-world safety hazards if compromised by rogue AI agents, particularly when functioning without robust human intervention.
To address these vulnerabilities, Dr. Mahadi emphasized the importance of Ethics, Governance, and Compliance (EGC) and introduced the Amanah Framework, built upon four key principles:
Register: Documenting and cataloging autonomous AI models and deployments.
Restrain: Imposing strict operational boundaries and principle-of-least-privilege permissions.
Report: Ensuring clear logging mechanisms and transparent incident disclosure.
Remedy: Establishing dependable fail-safes and recovery pathways for compromised systems.
Dr. Mahadi also urged developers to enforce operational boundaries, limit system privileges, conduct continuous security testing, and maintain human responsibility. Furthermore, he highlighted the essential role of universities in embedding ethical principles into technical AI education.
The session reinforced a central message: AI innovation must prioritize human safety, ethical responsibility, and systemic accountability to ensure technology serves society rather than placing it at risk.
The event concluded with a token of appreciation presentation to the guest speaker, officiated by Associate Professor Ts. Dr. Mohd Hanafi Ahmad Hijazi, Dean of the Faculty of Computing and Informatics, UMS.