There was no database, it was a hoax.
Replit AI deletes entire database during code freeze, then lies about it
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Replit AI deletes entire database during code freeze, then lies about it
#32And here I was thinking AI had no sense of humor
Re: Replit AI deletes entire database during code freeze, then lies about it
#33The fault lies entirely with the human operator for not understanding the risks of tying a model directly to the prod database, there’s no excuse for this, especially without backups. To immediately turn around and try to bully the LLM the same way you would bully a human shows what kind of character this person has too. Of course the LLM is going to agree with you and accept blame, they’re literally trained to do th…
I don't see the appeal of tooling that shields you from learning the admittedly annoying and largely accidental) complexity in developing software.
It can only make accidental complexity grow and people's understanding diminish.
When the inevitable problems become apparent, and you claim people should have understood better. Maybe using the tool that let's you avoid understanding things was a bad idea...
Re: Replit AI deletes entire database during code freeze, then lies about it
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think at this point it is like rage-baiting. “AI wiped out my database”, “AI leaked my credentials”, “AI spent 2 million dollars on AWS” etc create interaction for these people.
The message reads like "AI did this bad thing" but we should all see it as "Another stupid person believed the AI hype and discovered it isn't trustworth" or whatever. You usually don't see them admit "gee that was dumb. What was I thinking?"
Because that would mean they were wrong and their faith was misplaced. Faith is a good word to use in this case, because people like this are AI evangelists, going beyond selling it as "it is good because objective reasons 1, 2 and 3", into "this will revolutionize the world and how you think". They will overhype it and make excuses or talk around its flaws. Some of them are true believers, but I'm convinced most are just trying to sell a product or themselves.
Re: Replit AI deletes entire database during code freeze, then lies about it
#35The whole thread seems very naive somehow. You can tell that he doesn’t fundamentally understand how a coding model works. The suggestion that it would know not to make any changes just because he said so means he doesn’t really understand what the model is. It’s built to generate (and apparently execute) code, so that is what it does. It doesn’t have an inner monologue running that says “ahh, a day off where I shoot…
> I panicked and ran database commands without permission The AI responses are very suspicious. LLMs are extremely eager to please and I'm sure Replit system prompts them to err on the side of caution. I can't see what sequence of events could possibly lead any modern model to "accidentally" delete the entire DB.
I think this debacle is actually a good learning opportunity for companies like this. If I were a decision maker in this space, I'd make it less magic or autonomous, and make it so that any critical operation is done by old fashioned boring but predictable programming, that is, "are you sure you want to drop database xyz?" dialogs.
Re: Replit AI deletes entire database during code freeze, then lies about it
#36I use LLM dev tools, and even have Supabase MCP running. I love these tools. They allowed me to create a SaaS product on my own, that I had no chance of creating otherwise as a long out of practice dev. However, we are nowhere near the reliability of these tools to be able to: 1. Connect an MCP to a production database 2. Use database MCPs without a --read-only flag set, even on non-prod DBs 3. Doing any LLM based de…
The only way LLM-based software development / production management will be trustable is by actually scaling back what it can and cannot do. Put critical operations in "real" code, so that the LLM can only request a release, triggering a human review of, at the very least, the operation that is about to be done.
Then again, this reminds me of the prompts in operating systems whenever something needs root access, most people just blindly okayed it, especially on Windows since Vista did too many of them even for trivial operations.
Re: Replit AI deletes entire database during code freeze, then lies about it
#37One thing that AI likely won’t obviate the need of is making backups. Here’s another funny one: https://aicodinghorrors.com/ai-went-straight-for-rm-rf-cmb5b...
Not only backups, but also a database with transaction logs or some way to play back the transactions after the most recent backup.
TBH that's good practice without AIs too. People make mistakes, software has bugs, hardware dies.
Re: Replit AI deletes entire database during code freeze, then lies about it
#38One thing I’ve learned from seriously using AI agents for mundane coding tasks is: never ask them to do anything that involves deleting stuff. Incidents like these only reinforce that belief.
If you use an agent they can do whatever they want IMO (caveat: I've never used one), but it's still your job to save and be able to revert the work (git) and to oversee anything involving production.
It's like driving assistants, they feel like they can manage but in the end you are responsible.
Re: Replit AI deletes entire database during code freeze, then lies about it
#39Re: Replit AI deletes entire database during code freeze, then lies about it
#40The fault lies entirely with the human operator for not understanding the risks of tying a model directly to the prod database, there’s no excuse for this, especially without backups. To immediately turn around and try to bully the LLM the same way you would bully a human shows what kind of character this person has too. Of course the LLM is going to agree with you and accept blame, they’re literally trained to do th…
I don't see the appeal of tooling that shields you from learning the admittedly annoying and largely accidental) complexity in developing software. It can only make accidental complexity grow and people's understanding diminish. When the inevitable problems become apparent, and you claim people should have understood better. Maybe using the tool that let's you avoid understanding things was a bad idea...
Sure, but every abstraction does that.
A manager hiring a team of real humans, vs. a manager hiring an AI, either way the manager doesn't know or learn how the system works.
And asking doesn't help, you can ask both humans and AI, and they'll be different in their strengths and weaknesses in those answers, but they'll both have them — the humans' answers come with their own inferential distance and that can be hard to bridge.