> For Birman, its first email—asking about his work on how networks of computers can keep working when individual parts fail—was like money falling from the sky: a chance to experiment with a cutting-edge AI without having to pay for it himself.

Nice twist.

The question though who is compute hijacking whom?

A more darker take:

Thermodynamically by hijacking attention of highly efficent 100 watt machines the agent gets whatever the "mission" is "done". In this case supposedly a promotion prompt for a project.

The parasitization seems to be based of some modified version of cunningham's law effectively trying to nerd snipe 1500 x 100W scientists.