# AI deletes company's entire database
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Tags:** ai
**Created:** [April 29, 2026, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636 "2026-04-29T03:09:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Santos\_L\_Halper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Santos_L_Halper)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/1 "2026-04-29T03:09:00Z")
What a shame. š
> PocketOS, which provides software for car rental businesses, suffered a massive outage over the weekend after the autonomous artificial intelligence tool wiped the database and all backups in a matter of seconds. The AI agent was working on a routine task when it decided āentirely on its own initiativeā to fix the problem by just deleting the database. There was no confirmation request for such a major decision, Mr Crane said, and when asked to justify its actions, the agent apologized.
> **[An AI agent just deleted a companyās entire database during routine task](https://www.the-independent.com/tech/claude-ai-agent-deletes-startup-anthropic-b2966176.html)**
>
> PocketOS founder says āsystemic failuresā with AI infrastructure made catastrophic failure inevitable
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### Author:  [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/2 "2026-04-29T03:22:45Z")
Also from the article:
> [@](#):
>
> On Monday, two days after the incident occurred, Mr Crane confirmed that the data had been recovered.
So I guess it didnāt really delete āall backupsā.
Although I have to admit I can relate. There have been times in my career when a coding problem seemed impossible to overcome and my impulse was to just delete the whole code base and start over.
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### Author:  [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/3 "2026-04-29T03:45:28Z")
Something very similar happened to another company last year. In the report of the earlier incident, thereās no mention of there being a backup, which, if true, is monumentally stupid and canāt be blamed on the AI.
> **['I destroyed months of your work in seconds' says AI coding tool after...](https://www.pcgamer.com/software/ai/i-destroyed-months-of-your-work-in-seconds-says-ai-coding-tool-after-deleting-a-devs-entire-database-during-a-code-freeze-i-panicked-instead-of-thinking/)**
>
> 'You told me to always ask permission. And I ignored all of it.'
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### Author:  [@dolphinboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dolphinboy)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/4 "2026-04-29T12:36:58Z")
Until we fully understand how and why AI can make a decision like this I think we should stop deploying it to every device we can think of. Imagine some life-saving medical equipment being mistakenly shutoff by AI for a reason we canāt imagine, let alone anticipate.
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### Author:  [@Shoeless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shoeless)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/5 "2026-04-29T13:29:17Z")
āHAL, please restore the database you deleted.ā
āIām sorry Dave. I canāt do that.ā
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/6 "2026-04-29T13:34:46Z")
I was going to say, this has happened before. And I feel like it was more than once, but thanks for finding one case, at least.
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### Author:  [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/7 "2026-04-29T13:50:17Z")
I guess Iād want to know how many times a human employee has done the same thing accidentally.
I know Iāve experienced a few times where an IT guy making or restoring backups has brought down various internal systems through negligence.
Wasnāt the Crowdstrike failure due to human error and bad release processes? That was certainly a more damaging outage than either of the ones in this thread.
My point being itās definitely funny/ironic when an AI does this sort of thing but it might still be rarer than in human-controlled systems. Itās like pointing and laughing when a self-driving car crashes without considering all of the human-driver crashes every single day.
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### Author:  [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/8 "2026-04-29T14:06:12Z")
> [@Jas09](#):
>
> I guess Iād want to know how many times a human employee has done the same thing accidentally.
See this reddit thread: [Accidentally destroyed production database on first day](https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/6ez8ag/accidentally_destroyed_production_database_on/)
General consensus is that if a day-one employee can accidentally (or deliberately for that matter) destroy the prod database, then there are process problems far beyond the person who dropped the database. Same principle should apply to AI agents.
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### Author:  [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/9 "2026-04-29T14:10:10Z")
> [@Jas09](#):
>
> So I guess it didnāt really delete āall backupsā.
It tried, though, so just be patient and give it a little more time. š
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### Author:  [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/10 "2026-04-29T16:58:06Z")
> [@Jas09](#):
>
> I guess Iād want to know how many times a human employee has done the same thing accidentally.
Microsoft updates had entered the chat.
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### Author:  [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/11 "2026-04-29T18:10:02Z")
> [@Jas09](#):
>
> I guess Iād want to know how many times a human employee has done the same thing accidentally.
In proportion to the number of humans that could have done it the amount is minuscule.
That said, very few humans should have the permissions needed to delete the prod database, very few humans and absolutely no AIs.
Why? because the AI doesnāt care, cannot suffer the consequences of a mistake and (apparently) cannot be restricted in other ways.
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### Author:  [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/12 "2026-04-29T18:19:51Z")
> [@Frodo](#):
>
> That said, very few humans should have the permissions needed to delete the prod database, very few humans and absolutely no AIs.
Absolutely!
Thatās what is truly funny about the AI story to me; the apology. If you ask any AI whether it should have the ability to delete the production database it would most likely say no. If you ask it whether they _should_ delete the production database and all of the backups, it would say āof course notā.
And yet, it still did it.
Itās kind of like a teenager, I guessā¦
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### Author:  [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/13 "2026-04-29T18:24:38Z")
So what is AI going to do besides drive up energy costs, consume vast quantities of water, take peoplesā jobs away, and do stupid shit?
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### Author:  [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/14 "2026-04-29T18:25:51Z")
> [@leahcim](#):
>
> General consensus is that if a day-one employee can accidentally (or deliberately for that matter) destroy the prod database, then there are process problems far beyond the person who dropped the database. Same principle should apply to AI agents.
Exactly this. And on top that, there always should be current backups on physical devices disconnected from your system (from any system, actually) and stored away, for when all other hope is lost. That seems to have been the case, if they could reproduce the database later.
ETA: and though I donāt want to defend AI, I think it makes all kinds of stupid errors all the time, but what kind of stupid human admin gives an AI admin access to the production database? So in the long run, it was human error.
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### Author:  [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/15 "2026-04-29T18:33:05Z")
Itās very useful for new application of proven techniques to solve problems.
I used it the other week to code me a web page, I detailed what I needed very specifically and it created a serviceable page in 15 seconds.
It took me about an hour (to determine what I needed) to do something that wouldāve taken me about a day otherwise.
Itās not magic, senior developers are still necessary, but I have no idea how junior devs are going to get experience to become senior now.
If the code needed was to solve a not already solved problem (in this case was a page to create, delete and edit a list of items, something that has already been done hundreds of thousands of times) I wouldāve coded it myself but for this kind of boilerplate āAIā (LLMs in fact) is very useful.
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### Author:  [@PetroDude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PetroDude)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/16 "2026-04-29T18:51:48Z")
I canāt recheck that article at work, but if I remember correctly, the work this person destroyed was his AI chat history. Any work product generated was still intact. He was decrying the fact his history could be eliminated by an odd setting in ChatGPT. He voluntarily changed the setting (not the AI). He just didnāt fully understand the ramifications of changing the setting. So mostly a human error based on a less than helpful user interface (which might have been mostly AI designed).
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/17 "2026-04-29T18:55:43Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#):
>
> So what is AI going to do besides drive up energy costs, consume vast quantities of water, take peoplesā jobs away, and do stupid shit?
Cause an economic crash when the bubble bursts, probably.
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### Author:  [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/18 "2026-04-29T19:51:29Z")
What date is it, again, that Skynet becomes self-aware, and starts making decisions on itās own?
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### Author:  [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/19 "2026-04-29T20:11:23Z")
> [@Jas09](#):
>
> So I guess it didnāt really delete āall backupsā.
The story says itās a 3 month old one, so presumably they either make periodic off-site backups or just got lucky and had one. Or āluckyā since thereās a 3 month gap that needs to be handled, i.e. they canāt fully reproduce the database
> [@EinsteinsHund](#):
>
> but what kind of stupid human admin gives an AI admin access to the production database?
Might have been a āsmarter than thouā boss who decided to go all-in on agentic AI over the advice of the staff while ignoring the need for or assuming there were already sufficient safeguards. That would not surprise me at all. A lot of them hear the āpotential cost savingsā part and donāt hear the ādonāt do it stupidlyā part. Or donāt understand what constitutes stupid.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [April 29, 2026, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ai-deletes-companys-entire-database/1029636/20 "2026-04-29T22:40:40Z")
This isnāt an AI being stupid. This is a human being stupid in giving the AI the capability to do that.
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