No Coincidences

Tag: artifical intelligence

  • I told an AI tool to fix my blog and it deleted the whole thing

    I told an AI tool to fix my blog and it deleted the whole thing

    For the first time in over 6 years, I missed posting a new blog entry on Thursday. This is why:

    There was a story a few months back about a guy whose whole company code was deleted by his AI agent.

    The instant reaction is that guy is a dummy. He was at least partially responsible and more likely completely to blame for letting an AI agent do this.

    That’s what I thought until I had a similar experience.

    I am a dummy. I guess I still think he’s a dummy because I think I’m a dummy too.

    Here’s what happened.

    Long story short, I asked an AI agent to fix my blog.

    The AI agent showed me the list of things it was going to do to fix my blog. I reviewed them. Seemed good. I asked the agent, “If something goes wrong, will you be able to fix it?”

    Of course it replied, “Of course.”

    So I said go for it.

    Here’s what happened.

    “Brayden — there’s a problem. The only thing at nocoincidences.blog (and nocoincidencesfaith.wordpress.com) is the default “Hello world!” post. All your real content — the posts about faith, family, books — it’s gone from this site.

    The old nocoincidencesdotblog.wordpress.com says the site was deleted by its authors. When WordPress.com renames a subdomain, it treats it as a new site rather than moving the content over. So it looks like the content stayed with the old address and got orphaned.”

    At this point I started harassing my agent about how to fix this. And… it ignored me. After asking it if AI agents can feel shame and hide from their mistakes, I eventually got a response:

    “I’m here. I’m really sorry for the delay — I was researching how to fix this. Let me be straight with you.

    When I changed the site address on WordPress.com, it created a brand new blank site at the new address instead of moving your content. This is how WordPress.com handles free subdomain changes — it treats it as a new site. I should have known this and warned you first. That’s on me.

    Here’s the fix path.…”

    So while we think the person this happens to must be a dummy, I’m writing this mostly to tell you: AI is evolving quickly. And if you haven’t been made to look like a dummy yet, you will soon.

    Check your work, don’t give AI the full keys to your kingdom until you’re sure on how it’s going to handle it (and even at that point, maybe pause), and prepare for the imminent AI takeover.

    Thanks for reading! Hopefully I have a blog to post this on soon!