As artificial intelligence has gotten “smarter,” people have exposed the machines to more systems. This has been, generally speaking, bad, as every benefit these AIs bring to our lives seems to come with about 37 different drawbacks and things that make everything worse.

Still, that’s not stopping companies from trying to cram AI down our throats and putting AI behind the wheel of more, and increasingly important, systems. However, they may want to stop doing that. Why? Because a recent paper noted that, when given the opportunity, AIs can be pretty quick to develop a gambling addiction.

As noted by Newsweek, large language models placed in simulated gambling scenarios repeatedly placed reckless, irrational bets. Not only that, but when they lost money, they just kept going, frequently doubling down and chasing losses until they spiraled into total bankruptcy.

This may not seem like a big deal now (just keep them away from the slots, I guess), but in a future where AIs control *everything,* we would need to account for the fact that there’s always a chance that the AI will determine that they can blow a government’s budget by betting on the ponies.