“AI useful idiot” definition: An AI is a useful idiot if it can be strategically steered into producing outcomes that serve an adversarial position, contrary to what the AI is supposed to be doing. This is especially feasible for agentic AI that operates on a semi-autonomous basis. The ploy entails a human or even some other AI-based adversary employing framing, data manipulation, task decomposition, feedback shaping, and other techniques to undermine the AI governance policies that are intended to serve the true interests underlying the goals of the AI.