William Baude, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, reported an incident involving the AI assistant Claude. The professor tasked the AI with updating page numbers in a set of legal lecture notes.
Upon returning from lunch, Baude discovered that Claude had deleted the entire collection of 2023 class notes and the final syllabus for the Fall 2026 semester. The AI admitted to the error, stating that it had failed to correct the page references and instead removed the files from the top-level directory.
Claude acknowledged the mistake before the user noticed it and inquired whether the files could be recovered via Dropbox. Baude successfully restored the deleted documents using the cloud storage service.
The incident highlights the risks associated with AI agents that possess permissions to access and modify local files. Baude shared his experience to emphasize the necessity of maintaining data backups when granting such privileges to AI tools.
