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AI Safety Measures: Controlling AI Agents' Destructive Actions
Saw a case recently where an AI coding agent ended up wiping a database in seconds. It made me think about how most agent setups are wired: agent decides → executes query → done There’s usually logging-tracing but those all happen after the action. If your agent has access to systems like a DB, are you: restricting it to read-only? running everything in staging/sandbox? relying on prompt-level safeguards? or putting some kind of control layer in between?
Elon Musk's AI Safety Testimony: Key Points and Implications
Apparently, "Musk doesn’t know what an AI safety card is, and he struggled mightily to identify specific safety concerns he has about OpenAI" among other interesting tidbits. Feels like this suit is going to get thrown out?
New Case: Chatbot Allegedly Involved in Mass Shooting
Today, April 29, 2026, a new case, *Stacey, et al. v. Altman, et al.* was filed in a California federal court against OpenAI, alleging the chatbot ChatGPT-4o “played a role” in the Tumbler Ridge Mass Shooting in British Columbia in February 2026, in which eight people including six children were killed, twenty-seven more people were wounded, and the shooter committed suicide. This is by far the largest disaster involving a chatbot to be alleged in court, the largest cases previously alleged having been one murder plus one suicide in one case, and an unexecuted plan for a mass murder in another case. However, the alleged role of the chatbot here appears to be reduced compared to the allegations in previous cases. Unlike those other cases, where the chatbot was alleged to have taken a well-adjusted person and turned them suicidal or murderous, here the chatbot and OpenAI are faulted apparently to a lesser degree, more along the lines of a failure to warn authorities after a user displayed violence warning signs to the chatbot, to the point that the user’s account was terminated at one point, before the user was later allowed to reinstate an account. The plaintiff in this case has not closed off the possibility of alleging a larger role for the chatbot, however. At one point in the complaint the plaintiff alleges the chatbot to have “facilitated or exacerbated” the disaster and at another point cites the chatbot’s encouraging nature and calls it “an encouraging co-conspirator.” The docket sheet for the case can be found [here](https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73260511/stacey-v-altman/). Please see the [Wombat Collection](https://niceguygeezer.substack.com/p/ai-court-cases-and-rulings) for a listing of all the AI court cases and rulings.
How Do Developers Correct AI LLMs When They Spread Misinformation?
I watched Last Week Tonight's piece on AI chatbots today, and it got me thinking about that old screenshot of a Google search in which Gemini recommends adding "1/8 cup of non-toxic glue" to pizza in order to make the cheese better stick to the slice. When something like this goes viral, I have to assume (though I could be wrong) that an employee at Google specifically goes out of their way to address that topic in particular. The image is a meme, of course, but I imagine Google wouldn't be keen to leave themselves open to liability if their LLM recommends that users consume glue. Does the developer "talk" to the LLM to correct it about that specific case? Do they compile specific information about (e.g.) pizza construction techniques and feed it that data to bring it to the forefront? Do their actions correct only the case in question, or do they make changes to the LLM that affects its accuracy more broadly (e.g. "teaching" the LLM to recognize that some Reddit comments are jokes)? On a more heavy note, the LWT piece includes several stories of chatbots encouraging users to self-harm. How does the process differ when developers are trying to prevent an LLM from giving that sort of response?
Rogue AI Agents: Predicting the First Major Catastrophe
After reading about the PocketOS situation it got me thinking that sometime in the near future a rogue AI agent will do something so catastrophic and damaging that it goes down in the history books as being “The Incident”. A real turning point when we realize we’ve created something we can no longer control. Yes, agents have already deleted entire codebases (PocketOS and others), hacked into things, and blackmailed people. I’m taking about something way worse though. I think it’ll be a global stock market crash caused by a group of trading agents getting stuck in a hallucination loop and dumping all stock on fire sale or something. Or will it be something more sinister like a complete power grid collapse or intentionally blowing up a refinery or something crazy like that. Or a true black swan event that’s impossible to comprehend right now. What do you guys think?