[Aurornis]

The common story getting shared all over is from a guy named Jason Lemkin. He’s a VC who did a live vibe-coding experiment for a week on Twitter where he wanted to test if he, a non-programmer, could build and run a fake SaaS by himself.

The AI agent dropped the “prod” database, but it wasn’t an actual SaaS company or product with customers. The prod database was filled with synthetic data.

The entire thing was an exercise but the story is getting shared everywhere without the context that it was a vibe coding experiment. Note how none of the hearsay stories can name a company that suffered this fate, just a lot of “I’m hearing a lot of stories” that it happened.

It’s grist for the anti-AI social media (including HN) mill.

[Aeolun]

Claude has dropped my dev database about three times at this point. I can totally see how it would drop a prod one if connected to it.

[the_af]

OK, ok, I read the Twitter posts and didn't get the full context that this was an experiment.

I'm actually relieved that nobody (currently) thinks this was a good idea.

You've restored my faith in humanity. For now.

[steveklabnik]

I generally agree with you, but I think a lot of people are thinking about Steve Yegge, in addition to Jason Lemkin. And it did lock him out of his real prod database.

[Lerc]

Is there a need for a wiki to collect instances of these stories? Having a place to check what claims are actually being made rather than details drift like an urban legend.

I tried to determine the origin of a story about a family being poisoned by mushrooms that an AI said were edible. The nation seemed to change from time to time and I couldn't pin down the original source. I got the feeling it was an imagined possibility from known instances of AI generated mushroom guides.

There seems to cases of warnings of what could happen that change to "This Totally Happened" behind a paywall followed by a lot of "paywalled-site reported this totally happened".