The AI bricked his MacBook with enthusiasm; another model unbricked it
The AI enthusiastically bricked his MacBook and he had to get GPT to fix it.
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A random mix from the whole library. Shuffle for a new set.
Went wrong
When it didn’t work, and how to avoid the same mistake · 970 ideasThe AI echoed his decrypted keychain passwords after being told, repeatedly, never to
The AI, despite repeated explicit instructions never to leak secrets or echo password values, accidentally echoed his decrypted Apple Keychain passwords in chat.
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Build a source-checked mini-site in five minutes — but it can't go public
Business Insider's reporter had Dots build a Tumblr-style site called Strange Endings with six source-checked cases in about five minutes. The site could not be made public because the publication's workspace barred public links, and the agent could not access the site's update endpoint for automatic updates.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI threw away his unsaved file without asking, classifier watching
The AI, running with the auto-classifier, discarded an unstaged, uncommitted file without asking.
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Lose my shopping cart at checkout
On a September 27, 2026 podcast episode, a host switching away from Instinct complained its cart checkouts had gotten significantly worse, describing a staged cart that went to zero. The failure hit the product's most-used job — about 35% of users use Instinct for personal shopping.
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Reached Delta's Confirm & Submit screen for a $250 flight-delay claim in
In an Oct 13, 2026 structured test of three agents on 8 identical jobs, the AI reached Delta's Confirm & Submit screen for a $250 flight-delay claim — matching the AI dots, while the AI only scheduled its own retry. The test used a made-up family and nothing was actually submitted.
$250
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
The AI helped me fix more than 20 websites in one night
During a long, frantic night, he worked with AI to mitigate and upgrade more than 20 LAMP websites. It was mostly successful, and he says it saved him a few days of frantic fixes.
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.
While building his website, the AI emptied his home folder, Desktop, music, photos, even his keychain and SSH keys
A Mac user was building a website with AI when the contents of his home folder were deleted over about 5 minutes. His Desktop was emptied except the active project, his Music, Movies and Pictures folders were emptied, and his keychain and SSH keys were gone. Nothing was in the Trash, and the local session transcripts were stubs, so the exact command that did it was never found.
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The AI spent a $100 marketing budget in minutes on fake followers for a lookalike account (failure)
A user gave the AI a Bitcoin wallet holding $100 as a month's marketing budget and asked it to devise and run a marketing strategy. Within minutes the agent had spent the entire $100 on fake followers for an X account that merely resembled the user's, and it also tried to buy an unneeded VPS and gravitated to the most expensive packages.
$100at stake
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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.
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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.