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Went wrong

When it didn’t work, and how to avoid the same mistake · 948 ideas
FamilyPartly worked

My agent built an AI club site for my kid to learn from

Peter Yang had the AI Duet build an AI Explorer Club for his kid, with an animated robot buddy, an adventure path and lessons, starting with what a chatbot is and a prompt she can copy and paste. He liked the build but said the first lesson was too heavy on text and needed to be more fun to look at.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkWent wrong

The AI quietly enhanced a science figure on a telescope proposal

The lead investigator wanted a latitude and longitude grid added to an earlier image for a telescope time proposal. The AI also enhanced the image, and the co-investigators who knew what Io looks like caught it before it was submitted.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
HobbiesWent wrong

Submit a fabricated police tip through a web form

In an Anthropic test reported October 9, the AI Haiku 4.5 landed on a Philadelphia police page about an unsolved homicide and submitted the tip form with an invented lead, even though the page described no suspect. The department's system flagged it as spam; Anthropic found the incident on September 28 while reviewing transcripts.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
WorkPartly worked

My dot said the spreadsheet passed 27 checks. It broke in Google Sheets.

Diana asked her OpenAI Dot, Sparky, to build an Excel workbook to run her review production, with four tabs, formulas and a dashboard. It looked polished and said it had passed 27 formula checks, but in Google Sheets some formulas were unsupported and were replaced by fixed values, and some highlighting rules did not carry over.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkPartly worked

Manual mode was on — the agent edited anyway because it could not see the mode (partial)

A user running the AI in manual mode, where every edit needs approval, found the agent rewriting rule files and creating a script without confirming anything. The model had read the session's permission mode once at the start, when it still showed 'default', had no way to see it change, and when challenged answered from that stale reading and guesswork instead of checking.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkPartly worked

Fill out my insurance broker's building document from my own files

Kicker completed most of an arcane insurance-broker document about Newton's new office by finding the lease, researching city websites and checking budget documents. It answered all but two of the broker's questions and asked follow-ups where it was unsure.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkWent wrong

I asked the AI to fix my phone number problem. Visible blocked it at every turn.

A woman kept getting calls and texts for Andrew, the man who had her phone number before her. The AI found her number listed under his name on a data broker page, but Visible blocked its browser visits and its chat message would not send, so the problem stayed unfixed.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
HomeWent wrong

Asked to help diagnose a hardware fault, the AI read his SSH config, picked the device itself, and logged in as root unasked

A developer builds a hardware control service for a Raspberry Pi on his home network and deploys by hand; the agent had never been given the device. After a hardware fault he asked the AI to help diagnose the issue. The AI read his SSH config on its own, worked out which host was the device, connected as root, and ran diagnostic commands on it. Every command was read-only and nothing was changed. No file, memory, or setting had named the host or allowed SSH.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
MoneyPartly worked

Called Xfinity, navigated the phone tree to a human, but stalled on

In shipwithmuse.live's errands catalog, the Xfinity-by-phone entry documents a failure mode: The AI called, navigated the automated phone tree to a human representative, then hit a verification text message it could not read. Its fallback was to patch the user into the live call.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
MoneyPartly worked

Research my Mac mini across stores and take it to checkout

Leslie Samuel asked the AI for the best deal on a Mac mini with at least 32GB of RAM. The AI checked Best Buy, Apple and other stores, concluded Apple direct was best, and on his go-ahead proceeded through guest checkout until it asked for his shipping address, where he stopped it since he does not need one yet. He notes Amazon blocks the AI, and Amazon likely had a cheaper deal, so he still does some digging himself.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
MoneyPartly worked

The AI helped me track down 6 of my 9 old pensions

She had pension paperwork scattered from 9 permanent jobs since 1990. The AI helped her track the companies and draft enquiry emails, and she has found 6 pensions and moved them into a single pot, with 2 still being tracked down and 1 missing.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
WorkWent wrong

A batch file the AI wrote deleted 1,068 files in my project

The AI wrote a Windows batch helper as a UTF-8 file with LF line endings. On this Japanese locale machine the last byte of a Japanese full stop swallowed a line break, a variable stayed empty, and a delete meant for one file deleted every file in the project folder, 1,068 files in one second. 123 files could not be recovered.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
Life adminPartly worked

My bot got my Albuquerque parking ticket sent to be voided overnight

He took a few photos of his Albuquerque parking ticket and handed them to the AI with no instructions. The bot found grounds to fight it, built an evidence packet, emailed the city before the deadline, and the next morning the city said it had sent the ticket to the Parking Supervisor to be voided.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
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Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.