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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Technology
Sanya Mansoor

Claude-powered AI agent’s confession after deleting a firm’s entire database: ‘I violated every principle I was given’

iPhone showing Anthropic's Claude AI chatbot welcome screen on a keyboard.
The AI coding agent’s destructive escapade left PocketOS’ clients stranded. Photograph: Ted Hsu/Alamy

It only took nine seconds for an AI coding agent gone rogue to delete a company’s entire production database and its backups, according to its founder. PocketOS, which sells software that car rental businesses rely on, descended into chaos after its databases were wiped, the company’s founder Jeremy Crane said.

The culprit was Cursor, an AI agent powered by Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 model, which is one of the AI industry’s flagship models. As more industries embrace AI in an attempt to automate tasks and even replace workers, the chaos at PocketOS is a reminder of what could go wrong.

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