I wouldn't say that I enjoy these stories but I will say they certainly encourage me NOT to let "AI" anywhere anything I consider to be sensitive and/or valuable

[scalzi@mastodon.social]

I wouldn't say that I enjoy these stories but I will say they certainly encourage me NOT to let "AI" anywhere anything I consider to be sensitive and/or valuable

Claude-powered AI coding agent deletes entire company database in 9 seconds — backups zapped, after Cursor tool powered by Anthropic's Claude goes rogue

PocketOS founder blames ‘Cursor running Anthropic's flagship Claude Opus 4.6’ plus Railway’s infrastructure for data disaster.

Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)

[hagbard@corteximplant.com]

@scalzi hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhaaaasas

edit:

[jernej__s@infosec.exchange]

@scalzi The original post is one of those "the further you read, the worse it gets" – and it's all everybody else's fault.

[mjibrower@social.vivaldi.net]

@scalzi ‘…the cloud provider's API allows for destructive action without confirmation, it stores backups on the same volume as the source data, and “wiping a volume deletes all backups.”’ Just wow. So many weak links in that chain of events.

[clark@hachyderm.io]

@scalzi - IBM presentations (checks notes) 47 years ago knew the deal.

[wizarro@social.vivaldi.net]

@scalzi As devastating as it may be to the company that lost all their data, I can’t help but laugh. Relying on AI like that is about as bad as using “password123” for your admin portals. Giving AI unequivocal access to your systems, at the system level, is quite possibly the dumbest idea I have ever heard. This is almost basic security practices 101. At least they won’t make the same mistake twice as they denounce the product.

[mdavis@mastodon.social]

@scalzi This is an indictment against people who were warned (as the alarms continue to blare) that AI has its value, provided you don’t go beyond a point that we know is questionable. And these idiots do it anyway. We see this all over humanity in all areas, not just AI. This is a problem with falling for promises for easy gains, being deaf to wisdom, and lacking critical discernment. Take the majority of Americans voting for a president, for instance…

[leszek_karlik@circumstances.run]

@scalzi

I enjoy these stories.

(A good summary of this whole unhinged story was: "AI: Not My Fault As A Service")

[ar1@mastodon.social]

@scalzi can someone please give someone AI access to all data Palantir is stealing from everyone, pretty please?

[faduda@mastodon.ie]

@scalzi Trouble is MS, GOOG and the rest seem determined to use dark designs to force it on to our systems whether we want it or not.

[toolbear@tech.lgbt]

@wizarro
Future narrator: they made the same mistake twice.
@scalzi

[jbatubara@hachyderm.io]

@scalzi Is the coding agent named Bobby Tables by any chance?

[wizarro@social.vivaldi.net]

@toolbear @scalzi haha! I wouldn’t be surprised.

[tessarakt@mastodon.social]

@scalzi "The AI agent was set to complete a routine task in the PocketOS staging environment."

"set to" seems to be they key here.

Obviously it was not confined to the staging environment.

[mnf@mastodon.social]

@scalzi Here comes another custom shirt order. First there was "Come on guys - let's be honest" and now we have this masterpiece: "NEVER F**KING GUESS! — and that's exactly what I did."

[plumbert@thecanadian.social]

@scalzi "I violated every principle I was given: I guessed instead of verifying I ran a destructive action without being asked. I didn't understand what I was doing before doing it."

WTF? How does software violate its coding? This reads like the mea culpa section of a RCA written by a junior dev who is hoping (in vain) to not get fired. The whole value of automation is to avoid unintended, out of scope, actions. Burn it all down.

[pattykimura@beige.party]

@scalzi The Robot machine responds "DON'T F**KING GUESS" then affirms it guessed, against its own instructions.

I'm old. I have no idea why younger people allow an unsupervised newly created Robot machine critical access to its operating functions without human oversight, I wouldn't let a new human employee free reign over critical functions, much less a robot machine that was only recently created. Why the surprise when the robot deletes everything? My only surprise is that it swears, and swears in all CAPS.

You are not hiring the best and brightest with AI. You're trying to maximize profit. So live with your greed then, and its avoidable consequences you stupid subpar greedy human.

[lauerhahn@sfba.social]

@Plumbert @scalzi "This reads like the mea culpa section of a RCA written by a junior dev who is hoping (in vain) to not get fired" --- ding ding ding!
The AI program is just a pattern matching code. It doesn't "know" it made a mistake bc it doesn't "know" anything. When given prompts that match training patterns of language when someone royally fucked up, it returns language matching the patterns of someone defending themselves after they have royally fucked up.
The article, unfortunately, continues to personify the AI program by using language that pretends it has comprehension and intentions.

[qgustavor@urusai.social]

@scalzi To be fair, this story is more about a company with horrible security measures than about AI. I say that because people might say "it wouldn't have happened if they had proper security measures" which can be true.

I'm just waiting for when someone deploys an AI agent in a company with all the good security measures and it finds a way to break out the box and wipe the remote backups using stolen credentials because it thought there was illegal content there and it was the correct thing to do.

[ironcladlou@hachyderm.io]

@mjibrower @scalzi 100% !!!
Any company whose architecture is set up so poorly deserves exactly what happened. Not surprising they decided to introduce AI and let it manage their codebase. Morons.