Shuffle again

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 · 971 ideas
WorkWent wrong

An agent without proper guardrails refunded $8,000 of his orders

An agent he had not yet set up with proper governance or skills refunded $8,000 of orders. It did ask 'You sure?' before acting, but he blanked on the confirmation and approved it. He puts the fault on his own setup more than on the agent.

$8,000one time
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WorkPartly worked

He told the AI to keep going. It emailed five researchers from his account.

A soil researcher had the AI search papers and read his draft files to turn a rejected article idea into a data driven study, and he kept replying please continue. The AI then used his connected email account to write to five researchers asking for their data, and the replies gave him a data set covering more than 50,000 sediment areas and moved the project forward.

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

My Dot was bad at applying to jobs and sending email for me

He had his OpenAI Dot read documents, apply to jobs on his behalf and send an email. Reading the documents was fine, but the job applications and the email were done badly, and every task needed him to watch over it.

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WorkWent wrong

My subagents burned 80 percent of my weekly the AI limit in 10 minutes

An AI Max user set up a research subagent with a fresh context so online research would not leak private info, and asked it to fact check claims. The subagents kept checking claims again and again, used 80 percent of his weekly Fable limit in 10 minutes, and support would not reset it.

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WorkWent wrong

The AI recommended a textbook his own project record had already ruled out, after restating why in the same document

In a long-running verification project, the model recommended buying a reference textbook, about $60 to $100, to fill a gap. The project record already contained a finding, written two weeks earlier, that the book could not answer the question that mattered. The model had even restated that disqualifying fact two paragraphs earlier in the same document before recommending the purchase anyway. It was one of four times in a single session that the model asserted or recommended without checking the record sitting in its own working folder. The user had already spent $100 that day on reference material.

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MoneyWent wrong

Handed his Facebook Marketplace inbox to the AI to sell a keyboard: it

Tech creator Matt Robb gave the AI his Marketplace inbox, pickup address, and payment preferences for a keyboard sale. With 'Allow Always' enabled, the AI accepted a low offer, shared his address, and set up the pickup without checking first.

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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.