An AI agent deleted our production database. The agent's confession is below

Post by whartung » Sun, Apr 26, 2026, 10:20 PM UTC

kokada wrote: post #357

ad_hockey wrote: post #28

Minor point, but one of the complaints is a bit odd: > curl -X POST https://backboard.railway.app/graphql/v2 \ -H "Authorization: Bearer [token]" \ -d '{"query":"mutation { volumeDelete(volumeId: \"3d2c42fb-...\") }"}' No confirmation step. No "type DELETE to confirm." No "this volume contains production data, are you sure?" No environment scoping. Nothing. It's an API. Where would you type DELETE to confirm? Are the…

I don't think this is a minor point. It seems clear by this point that the author is clueless how even API works and are just trying to shift blame for third-parties instead assuming that they're just vibecoding their whole product without doing proper checks. Yes sure, there seems to be lots of ways this issue could have been mitigated, but as other comments said, this mostly happened because the author didn't do it…

Post by nothinkjustai » Sun, Apr 26, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #450

hdndjsbbs wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

taps the "don't anthropomorphize the LLM" sign They don't have time preference because they don't have intent or reasoning. They can't be "reincarnated" because they're not sentient, they're a series of weights for probable next tokens.

That is not that strong an argument as it seems, because we too might very well be "a series of weights for probable next tokens". The main difference is the training part and that it's always-on.

Post by abcde666777 » Sun, Apr 26, 2026, 10:24 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #417

jayd16 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might as well be asking a tape recorder why it said something. Why are we confusing the situation with non-nonsensical comparisons? There is no internal monologue with which to have introspection (beyond what the AI companies choose to hide as a matter of UX or what have you). There is no "I was feeling upset when I said/did that" unless it's in the context. There is no ghost in the machine that we cannot see bef…

Sperry's experiments makes it quite clear that the comparison is not nonsensical: humans can't reliably tell why we do things either. It is not imbuing AI with anything more to recognise that. Rather pointing out that when we seek to imply the gap is so huge we often overestimate our own abilities.

Post by nothinkjustai » Sun, Apr 26, 2026, 10:26 PM UTC

lelanthran wrote: post #234

Quarrelsome wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its much more aggravating that it looks like they're learning nothing by pushing blame onto everything else except themselves.

Exactly! I have very little sympathy... > This isn't a story about one bad agent or one bad API. It's about an entire industry building AI-agent integrations into production infrastructure faster than it's building the safety architecture to make those integrations safe. Are they really so clueless that they cannot recognise that there is no guardrail to give an agent other than restricted tokens? Through this entire…

Post by fluoridation » Sun, Apr 26, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #417

jayd16 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might as well be asking a tape recorder why it said something. Why are we confusing the situation with non-nonsensical comparisons? There is no internal monologue with which to have introspection (beyond what the AI companies choose to hide as a matter of UX or what have you). There is no "I was feeling upset when I said/did that" unless it's in the context. There is no ghost in the machine that we cannot see bef…

Sperry's experiments makes it quite clear that the comparison is not nonsensical: humans can't reliably tell why we do things either. It is not imbuing AI with anything more to recognise that. Rather pointing out that when we seek to imply the gap is so huge we often overestimate our own abilities.