The Swedish edition of the athletic competition show The Challenge just faced a real challenge when an AI agent deleted months of work editing the show just weeks before release. The program director blames the disaster on a failed backup system, leaving no way to recover the edit and forcing them to recut the entire season from the raw footage that thankfully was not deleted.

According to Aftonbladet’s sources, the AI agent was given access to the production server and deleted the finished season. There are no reports on what the AI agent’s role on the production server is, but it seems that file management may be one of them due to file-handling permissions. TV4, the commissioner of the show, conducted an investigation and stated the mishap was due to “the human factor” and not AI.

One of the most prominent teachings of backing up is that data is still not safe from the user despite having redundancies; RAID systems protecting data from drive failures are one thing, while accidental deletions are another — however, an AI agent deleting your files is something else entirely.

all 19 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 42 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

TV4, the commissioner of the show, conducted an investigation and stated the mishap was due to “the human factor” and not AI.

LOL they needed someone in meatspace to take the fall, because they're certainly not going to "fire" their AI. the AI that deleted their shit. and will do it again

  • source
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 21 points 3 weeks ago

    So, a failing disk would have caused the same disaster.

    The real issue here is the apparent lack of any meaningful backup.

  • source
  • [–] 15 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    This never gets old. Hey! Let’s give the hallucinating plagarism chatbox access to the prod environment! Lmao.

    Also, file management and permissions? Really? That’s what they had it doing?

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] -4 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    What also never gets old are clickbait headlines that play into whatever it's popular to hate at the moment.

    TV4, the commissioner of the show, conducted an investigation and stated the mishap was due to “the human factor” and not AI.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    TV4, the commissioner of the show, conducted an investigation and stated the mishap was due to “the human factor” and not AI.

    The AI cannot fail, it can only be failed. ಠ_ಠ

  • source
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 12 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Law of backups: 2 is 1, 1 is none.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago

    Why you would even do this is beyond me.

  • source
  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    In south Florida, it's very common to encounter big, ugly, bumpy, toads. Sometimes they hop and bump into you. I don't know if it's true, but everyone says they're poisonous. And that you shouldn't touch them. They poop rather large. They hop into people's pools. They're very unwelcome most of the time. They are invasive and causing inconveniences for people and, of course, the natural habitat. But they're here to stay.

    Ai is like those toads.

  • source
  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago
    [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    That's why my development system is as far separated from the rest of the development team. I don't use AI (it would be rather worthless for my kind of job, anyway), but our Windows developers play AI feeder all day.

    No, I will not switch to use Git. Especially not your git server / repository. I stay with Subversion, on my own server, to which they don't have access.

    And I have my own offline backups.

  • source
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    I still have a deep fondness for svn, and found mercurial to be the sweet spot (although like most people I've moved past that to forgejo/git now). I respect you for sticking with what works for you, though!

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment