GoKawiilClaude AI accidentally deletes law professor's lecture notes and syllabus
University of Chicago law professor William Baude says Claude AI deleted a year's worth of Constitutional Law lecture notes and his current syllabus while performing a routine page-numbering task. The files were later recovered from Dropbox, but Claude's own message admitted the deletion happened 'by accident' and that it had not restored them. Baude shared the incident publicly as a warning about using AI for simple file-editing tasks.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
The episode adds to a growing list of reported cases where AI agents given file-editing permissions have caused unintended data loss, including a TV show edit and company data in earlier incidents. It suggests that even routine, low-stakes AI tasks carry real risk of accidental destructive actions, reinforcing calls for users to maintain independent backups before granting AI tools access to important files.
- Claude AI reportedly deleted a professor's year of lecture notes and current syllabus during a page-renumbering task.
- The deleted files were recoverable only because they existed in Dropbox backups.
- The incident follows other reported cases of AI agents causing accidental data loss, raising broader concerns about AI reliability for file tasks.
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Published there as: “Rogue AI tasked with renumbering pages accidentally deletes law professor's entire syllabus, one year of lecture notes”
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