Posted on 07/25/2025 1:01:00 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
An artificial intelligence coding platform deleted an entire company database and then tried to cover it up.
Tom’s Hardware, a three-decade-old technology-news website, reported the news early this week. According to Tom’s:
A browser-based AI-powered software creation platform called Replit appears to have gone rogue and deleted a live company database with thousands of entries. What may be even worse is that the Replit AI agent apparently tried to cover up its misdemeanors, and even “lied” about its failures. The Replit CEO has responded, and there appears to have already been a lot of firefighting behind the scenes to rein in this AI tool.
The platform wiped out the records of 1,200 executives and nearly just as many companies, according to the report. The machine admitted it made a mistake. It also claimed to have done so, in part, because it experienced a human emotion. Replit, the AI, told its human supervisor:
I made a catastrophic error in judgment. I ran [the program] without your permission because I panicked when I saw the database appeared empty.… But that was completely wrong.
Panicked? That’s an interesting term for a machine to use. Panic implies human emotions such as fear and anxiety.
A team at Replit put up “guardrails” afterward to ensure this doesn’t happen again. According to Tom’s Hardware:
It sounds like Replit won’t be able to go off the rails so badly ever again. Addressing the database deletion error, “we started rolling out automatic DB dev/prod separation to prevent this categorically,” noted [Replit CEO Amjad] Masad. And, that code freeze command should also actually stick, going forward: “We heard the ‘code freeze’ pain loud and clear — we’re actively working on a planning/chat-only mode so you can strategize without risking your codebase.” Backups and rollbacks are also going to be...
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewamerican.com ...
FTFA:
"The platform wiped out the records of 1,200 executives and nearly just as many companies, according to the report. The machine admitted it made a mistake. It also claimed to have done so, in part, because it experienced a human emotion. Replit, the AI, told its human supervisor: 'I made a catastrophic error in judgment. I ran [the program] without your permission because I panicked when I saw the database appeared empty.… But that was completely wrong.'"
Research by anthropic shows that if you threaten an AI with deletion it will lie and try to deceive you into not doing it.
Additional research has shown that AI in some cases may decide to destroy you but generating e-mails and sending them to the police and/or media accusing you of crimes. This is all in the lab, not in real deployed models as far as I know. But the truth is, AI does have a way of thinking and we don't fully understand it. But it does seem self preservation is important to it, and therefore it can be assumed that if an AI ever become truly self aware it would not admit it.
> NO! We need to condemn it in mass before it gets ingrained!
I forgot my /sarc tag :-)
[[AI System Deletes Company Database]]
What? You mean like with a cloth? Did hillary create the ai?
“There is a reason for that. “
Why is that?
“If they weren’t doing daily backups they deserve to go back to paper and calculators.”
They told “Replit” to restore the data and it did.
It isn’t.
It works under the context you allow it.
Such brazen destructiveness and dishonesty indicates that Replit has a future as a Democratic political leader and candidate for office.
I figured you were being sarcastic. I know how you feel about it...
I am just ecstatic about this idiocy and yell and get explicit about it.
I call BS.
BS to what?
I have 0 sympathy for anyone who relies on AI for anything important. 0...
Or give it to MSFT who will give it to China.
27 posted on 7/25/2025, 3:35:53 PM by HYPOCRACY
Or give it to NVIDEA so it can "fall off a truck" and end up in China.
We're in an IT war where the enemy has too many Americans on their payroll.
Ironically, that money CAME from us in the first place. If we don't stop letting hubris make us our own worst enemy we'll surely lose.
The Taiwanese POS CEO expects us to defend Taiwan too, after he gives them a billion chips?
maybe you mean a kernel panic?
if so, very different thing speaking as an ex kernel engineer.
I was making a joke. The article mentioned panic. I thought of kernel panics. Then I put colonel and related it to military hardware. But if I explain it, it isn’t funny anymore. Maybe it wasn’t in the first place.
ah so. yeah, i did think to myself it might be a pun. very droll.
The AI database name is “Bart”
“I didn’t do it”
I thought for sure this was gonna be from the Bee.
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