“We have a kill switch that prevents AI agents from going rogue”: ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott says his company can help companies move “from AI chaos to AI discipline.”

ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott calls for a shift from “AI chaos to AI discipline”
Comments come after infiltration of OpenAI Hugging Face model
McDermott says ServiceNow tools have a ‘kill switch’ to prevent such incidents

ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott explained why his company’s AI offerings have an edge over the competition, in part thanks to built-in controls that can cut off access when needed.

Talk to CNBCMcDermott said ServiceNow’s tools help companies move “from AI chaos to AI discipline.”

“We have a kill switch that prevents AI agents from becoming malicious, so these things don’t need to happen, and they wouldn’t happen when companies run ServiceNow,” McDermott said.

I’m not going rogue

McDermott’s comments come shortly after the high-profile incident that saw an OpenAI model breach the online repository Hugging Face.

The incident was part of an experiment by OpenAI as part of its testing of GPT‑5.6 Sol and an “even better preliminary model” to see how they performed on the ExploitGym benchmark.

Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf called the event a “wake-up call,” telling the BBC “This will be one of the most common types of cyberattacks that we encounter,” adding that most businesses don’t realize that “the game has changed.”

Many large software companies have experienced some trepidation over their growing use of AI, but McDermott dismissed concerns that this growing AI competition could affect ServiceNow’s customer retention.

“If you look at the terms of our contracts, they’re actually longer,” McDermott said, noting that greater adoption of AI should actually increase demand for tools like those provided by ServiceNow.

“There’s going to be more AI. There’s going to be more incidents, and all of these things are driving more and more volume to ServiceNow,” he said.

The news came as ServiceNow reported its latest results, with subscription revenue of $3,877 million in the second quarter of 2026, representing growth of 24.5% year-over-year and 23% at constant currency.

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