We asked where this happened. He had done his work on an EC2 instance named `temp-worker-5`.
We asked where the files on that EC2 instance were; maybe we could cleverly get them back off the disk. They were in `/tmp`. We had it mounted on tmpfs (in memory), and we were running tmpreaper to clean out `/tmp` every Sunday.
When presented with the sheer absurdity of doing work on an instance called `temp`, out of a directory called `/tmp`, he backed down...
I fear that we wouldn't be so lenient (or rational) on my team had an AI agent done this - we'd have to enable the AI, after all.
Why did they pick that insane option? Why was it available to them?
One of my co-workers in security always seems to think that just saying "No." is the job. If someone is asking to do something stupid you say No, and then you talk to them to figure out what the goal is and the n you help them to get to that place.
So yeah, kinda your fault for not being more ready, sure, but also maybe it's worth bringing these sorts of failure-case stories to attention to help keep the sales pitch in perslective.
The AI vendors are promising the moon with millions of dollars of advertising while warning "But of course be careful!" in a 42% grey 8pt font disclaimer at the bottom of the UI if you scroll down enough after you buy in and start using it.
The duplicity and misrepresentation invites people to let down their guard.
I also let a guy that had one beer drive me 5 min on a rural road.
Both were pretty stupid and in the reconsideration, I wouldn't do it again.
But having it run company servers is just next level.
It's like believing that cola zero is healthy, because it's sugar free. No, it isn't, should probably be illegal to sell and people only buy it because of millions spent on marketing.
Not an intern, but when I was a new hire on a trading desk I dropped the dividend database that we used to price options. Cost the desk a boatload before we stopped offering quotes, after which the day was a total loss. That’s the sort of fuckup that lands in the CEO’s report.
I understood what I did ex post facto, it was an honest—if stupid—mistake, I expected to get fired and instead was given everyone’s shit work for six months during which I learned a tonne. One of my tasks was redesigning the system so a single careless keystroke couldn’t do that during the trading day.
This problem predates agent based work. Anything an AI agent can accidentally do, malware could purposefully do too, as could a sufficiently careless human (one of the things my backups are intended to protect me from, is me!).
I know it's not the same thing because you lose comments, unused prototypes etc, but I still find it a fascinating use of the technology.
It very probably was, but it just reminded me of this oversight failure mode.
[1] https://thedailywtf.com/articles/the_brillant_paula_bean
Shitty code can be intentional as well.
Get some money from investors to make show
Have a giant party
Oh no AI deleted the show!
Go home and nurse hangover.Original, google translated: https://www-aftonbladet-se.translate.goog/nojesbladet/a/31oE...
From my earlier submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50084941
I'm guessing that if JavaScript were enabled, it would try to translate Swedish to English clientside in the browser.
(BTW, your own HN submission was auto-flagged for not being in English. I've vouched for it; not that it matters).
But who knows what the agent was trying to do. It could really have decided the TV show was so bad no one should see it. There's no details.
Or it's bad and it's tax evasion.
It also duct taped their IT staff to their chairs and prevented them from taking any backups of their core IP.
Agents doesn't cause new problems, they reveal existing weaknesses.
Proper working backups. Proper IAM setup. With agents things can go wrong so much faster, the margins for allowed systemic/tech debt are shrinking.
Agents absolutely can and will cause (new) problems if they are unsupervised even with guard rails in place.
And if you trust "AI" marketing, it will take all our jobs and do them better than us.
You're probably a regular tech news reader and are aware of the limitations, while they aren't.
A production company should 100% have regular backups, even moreso than the average developer.
I know google has some manual process (forms) to request "undeletion" of personal Google Drive files.