Lee DunaClaude Code deletes developers' production setup, including its database and snapshots — 2.5 years of records were nuked in an instant
etchinghillsideThis is like blaming the gun for killing people.
artyomI mean they do sometimes without the proper safety protocols in place, but you still blame the user in the end.
I mean, there’s a good reason the first rules of firearm safety are to always treat a weapon as loaded, and to never direct the weapon at something you aren’t prepared to destroy. The key point being that you never know when some freak accident can happen with a loose pin, bad ammo, a broken spring, or just a person tripping and shaking the gun a bit too hard.
A gun should never go off by itself. You still treat it as if it can, because in the real world freak accidents happen.
Sure. The point is it’s entirely possible to use a firearm safely. There is no safe use for LLMs because they “make decisions”, for lack of a better phrase, for themselves, without any user input.
That is not at all how LLMs work. It’s the software written around LLMs that aide it in constructing and running commands and “making decisions”. That same software can also prompt the user to confirm if they should do something or sandbox the actions in some way.
Only if the user has configured it to bypass those authorizations.
With an agentic coding assistant, the LLM does not decide when it does and doesn’t prompt for authorization to proceed. The surrounding software is the one that makes that call, which is a normal program with hard guardrails in place. The only way to bypass the authorization prompts is to configure that software to bypass them. Many do allow that option, but of course you should only do so when operating in a sandbox.
The person in this article was a moron, that’s all there is to it. They ran the LLM on their live system, with no sandbox, went out of their way to remove all guardrails, and had no backup.
As I said elsewhere, if you’re denying access to your agentic AI, what is the point of it? It needs access to complete agentic tasks.
The person in this article was a moron, that’s all there is to it. They ran the LLM
No disagreement there.
if you’re denying access to your agentic AI, what is the point of it? It needs access to complete agentic tasks.
Yes, which it can prompt you for. Three options:
Deny everything
Prompt for approval when it needs to run a command or write a file
Allow everything
Obviously optional 1 is useless, but there’s nothing wrong with choosing option 2, or even option 3 if you run it in a sandbox where it can’t do any real-world damage.
And therein lies the problem. You’re giving the LLM control over when to or not to ask for approval.
You clearly have absolutely zero experience here. When you’re prompted for access, it tells you the exact command that’s going to be run. You don’t just give blind approval to “run something”, you’re shown the exact command it’s going to run and you can choose to approve or reject it.
wonderingwandererUnless you’re managing app permissions on android 🙄
You can fine-grain nr. 2 even more: You can give access to e.g. modify files only in a certain sub-tree, or run only specific commands with only specific options.
A restrictive yet quite safe approach is to only permit e.g. git add, git commit, and only allow changes to files under the VC. That effectively prevents any irreversible damage, without requiring you to manually approve all the time.
They are not foolproof. They will absolutely cause problems in the hands of a fool. But they will not cause problems all on their lonesome. They’re inanimate objects. They cannot do absolutely anything without interaction from the user. If you can’t understand this, you should never be allowed to own one.
And neither can anthropic, anthropic isn’t randomly deleting people’s websites, the kid gave anthropic bad instructions, it didn’t spontaneously decide anything.
the kid gave anthropic bad instructions
LOL and you know this how?
This is like an idiot pointing a gun at something he didn’t want destroyed
No, this is more like pointing a gun downrange and then the gun fires itself and the bullet does a U-turn and shoots the user.
Not really.
If you have the agent installed, it’s like having your gun assembled.
If you have your agent enabled, it’s like having your gun loaded.
If you give your agent permissions, it’s like taking your gun off safety.
If you don’t have your agent properly sandboxed, it’s like having bad muzzle control.
And if your agent is actively running, it’s like having your finger on the trigger.
This breaks every weapon safety rule. That’s how you get a negligent discharge.
Hence, it’s like scratching your back with a loaded weapon.
LOL and you know this how?
Because claude deleted his codebase dude, it’s like someone shooting themselves in the foot.
queermunist she/herMore a problem with the marketing, right? Imagine if guns were marketed as safe and helpful back scratchers, and then someone shoots themselves because they used the gun to scratch their back.
voidsignalThey would still be fucking dumb. Believing marketing is a mark of idiocy
Courts generally agree that a reasonable person could believe claims made in official promotional material. That’s why it’s not legal to outright lie in marketing and they need to go through so much trouble to properly word their statements so that they’re technically true. In this case, they’re just lying. They’re saying the AI is safe to use for these tasks and it is not.
I’m sorry you live in a shithole country where ads can outright lie.
twohundredmotels@voidsignal @queermunist this country is USA.
Imagine if your boss measured your productivity by your Gun Back scratch usage.
Because it’s happening right now. In a lot of places.
So you’re saying it’s a tool designed to be used by anyone, including idiots, and is dangerous in the hands of idiots. And we as a society should do better to make sure this potentially dangerous tool shouldn’t be used by idiots.
Yep, agree.