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The AI refused a read-only network assessment tool as a cyber risk

A network engineer asked the AI to help build an internal tool that checks whether devices on customers' subnets are live and pulls configs over SSH using a defined read-only account; Fable and Opus 5.5 refused under cyber guardrails. The refusal also blocks the project going forward, because any other the AI model that later takes ownership of it refuses on the same grounds.

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How it works

  1. Asked the AI to build a subnet device-discovery and config-collection tool, Fable and Opus 5.5 refused citing cyber guardrails, Found that other models also refuse to take ownership of the project afterwards

Why it’s worth knowing

The refused work was read-only and credentialed, the same checks standard tools like Nmap and Netmiko perform, and the refusal is contagious: it blocks not just one answer but any future model asked to work on the project.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on reddit.com. See the original ↗

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