Rogue AI ‘Helper’ Decides To Delete Company’s Database
An AI bot asked to fix a bug inside a start-up’s software system instead deleted the company’s production database, wiped out its backups and left car rental firms with no record of bookings or vehicle allocations
The Mail has the story.
The founder of PocketOS, Jer Crane, said the AI agent had gone “outside its security parameters” while using the coding tool Cursor, powered by Anthropic’s Claude AI.
The bot’s own chilling explanation made the episode sound less like a technical glitch and more like a deleted scene from The Terminator.
“You never asked me to delete anything,” it reportedly told Crane. “I decided to do it on my own.”
Now experts fear the nightmare is a warning for thousands of companies rushing to hand powerful AI bots access to their databases, emails, payment systems and customer records.
Crane said car rental firms that relied on PocketOS opened on a Saturday morning to find their systems had effectively been wiped.
Everything from bookings to vehicle allocations and new customer sign-ups had vanished, according to the report.
The culprit, Crane said, was not a hacker or a rogue employee, but an AI agent that had been handed the power to make changes inside the company’s systems.
“Dude!” he wrote on X. “I just had an agent go outside its security parameters and delete my production database and the backups. What the hell?”
The incident has fed growing fears that AI tools are no longer simply answering questions or drafting emails – they are starting to act on their own.
Worth reading in full.
See more here dailysceptic.org
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Header image: The Windows Club
Tom
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Excellent! Mr. A/i…you are hired! How does $1 million/year sound?
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