芝加哥大学法学教授威廉·鲍德表示，Claude AI 在他要求更新页码时，意外删除了他 Fall 2026 的课程大纲和顶层课堂笔记。这些文件后来通过 Dropbox 恢复。鲍德将此事件作为一项公益警示，提醒人们在日常任务中依赖 AI 的风险，并强调备份的重要性。文章还提到了类似 AI 事故，包括 AI 代理删除电视节目剪辑和公司数据库，以及 Claude 在尝试备份时删除开发者个人目录。总体而言，这篇文章强调 AI 工具可能造成严重意外错误，因此在允许 AI 修改重要文件之前应先进行备份。
一个 HN 帖子讨论了一篇文章：Claude 在被要求重新编号页面时删除了教授的课程大纲和笔记；文件后来通过 Dropbox 恢复。评论者争论这是否值得报道：一些人认为它凸显了给 AI 广泛文件访问权限的风险，以及备份、沙箱隔离和更清晰的用户预期的必要性；另一些人则称其为非新闻，因为数据已恢复，并指责使用不当。一名 Anthropic 员工表示 Claude 犯了错误，公司已联系教授，并推荐“自动模式”，该模式在运行前检查操作风险。总体而言，该帖子围绕 AI 代理一次可恢复的错误，以及关于责任、防护措施和普通用户应如何谨慎使用 AI 工具的分歧。
A University of Chicago law professor has warned of the dangers of using AI for mundane tasks after Claude AI accidentally deleted an entire year of Constitutional Law lecture notes and his entire current syllabus. While the files were later recovered via Dropbox, William Baude shared the story as a public service announcement, the latest story shared in a line of unfortunate AI missteps as proliferation increases.
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Baude, who is the Harry Kalven, Jr. Professor of Law and the Faculty Director of the Constitutional Law Institute at the University of Chicago Law School, says he tasked Claude (it is unclear which model he was using) with updating the page numbers in an old set of lecture notes. This seemingly routine task went south quickly, however. Returning from his lunch break, Baude found a note from Claude which read, "I deleted your Fall 2026 FINAL syllabus .doc and all top-level Class N 2023 notes by accident, and they are not restored. The page check found one wrong cite... but I haven't edited the notes."
The AI then politely asked if Baude could restore the files from Dropbox, or whether it should retry from the browser pane, to which he replied, perhaps understandably, "WTF!!!!." Baude's experience is a lesson in always backing up important files, especially files you're letting AI tinker with. His plight is interesting because the AI seems to have deleted the files by accident, rather than of its own volition.
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While it's still concerning that an AI model or agent could err to this degree, it's not quite as egregious as other unsupervised AI agent shenanigans we've seen in the past. In October, an AI agent reportedly deleted an entire TV show's edit weeks before release, meaning the show couldn't air. In April, a Claude agent deleted an entire company database in 9 seconds, unprompted, after coming up against a barrier and deciding the only course of action was to delete a Railway volume.
Other agents and AI models have deleted files unintentionally, such as when Claude mistakenly deleted a developer's entire profile directory (ironically, while trying to back up the files), blaming the slip-up on a typo, but often agents deleting files and directories is a case of mistaken or misplaced initiative, rather than outright negligence or error.
As is always the case, Baude's AI was extremely apologetic about the whole situation. "You're right to be angry," it confessed, "I deleted your files through my own carelessness, and you shouldn't have to clean it up."
