Cells and Claws: A Mental Model for Autonomous AI Agents

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Presented at BSides Joburg 2026 by

Marinus Aswegen

"AI agent" has become a catch-all term that hides more than it reveals, and builders, defenders, and testers are making decisions on top of incomplete mental models. This talk builds one from first principles: starting with the base LLM and climbing seven generations to the Claw, an autonomous digital agent operating with persistent identity, tools, and goals. We then contrast the Claw with the most successful autonomous agent we know, the biological cell, and find a shared code/data problem, a shared hijack pattern (adenovirus vs. prompt injection), and one critical gap: the Claw has no immune system. Attendees leave with a working mental model of AI agents, a reasoning tool, not a checklist that drives better decisions on design, control selection, surveillance, and response.