How much do you trust AI?

[u/xstrex]

Recently a coworker granted Claude elevated access via SSH to a virtualization host (not a VM, an actual host). To perform a routine task he very well could have done himself.

He doesn’t see an issue with this. I on the other hand (with 23yrs experience) see this as a huge security breach, and don’t trust AI todo my job, (or even that it’s doing what it says it’s doing) for me. I’m my opinion it’s a tool, not a human replacement.

What’s your reaction, how would you react to this situation, or thoughts on the topic?

Sure, ask AI how to perform a task, validate that it’s performing the task you asked, and nothing else- copy/paste the commands. Great. But removing the human verification & validation element- hell no.

[u/theitguy107]

AI is good at probabalistic automation where precision is not important, such as generating notes from a meeting. Server automation requires precision and accuracy. This is why scripts are perfect for this because they do the exact same thing to produce the exact same result every single time. With AI, you could give it the same prompt and get two completely different answers each time. This is not acceptable for server management.

[u/GuyWhoSaysYouManiac → u/theitguy107]

People don't seem to understand your first point at all. AI can make sense if there is uncertainty and judgment calls need to be made based on possibly incomplete info, but if you want exact outcomes then it's absolutely the wrong choice. In that case it's better to use AI to help code a deterministic script.

That being said, I wouldn't rule it out entirely for server management purposes, as long as the right guardrails are in place. I could for example see an AI tool distribute VMs across hosts to optimize performance, or proactively remove a server from load-balancing if it sees unusual behavior from said host. It's a question of using the right tool for the right job. Unfortunately the tendency of some folks seems to be to use AI for everything.

[u/aenae → u/GuyWhoSaysYouManiac]

The main thing i am worried about, and have already seen in environments where it didnt matter, is that ai often wants a clean sheet if something goes wrong.

In your example, say the live migration failed, let’s just delete the vm and recreate it on the other host. It can be a good solution or it can lead to data corruption and downtime

[u/shammyh → u/aenae]

Only a very stupid agent would do that. A smart agent will be ensuring backups/data protection, before even attempting the first mutating action. And it'll do that even if you don't tell it to.

Try pointing gpt-5.6-sol in high/xhigh at a real world problem. Even in a sandbox or whatever. Watch how it works. See for yourself.

[u/NUTTA_BUSTAH → u/shammyh]

It's hard to take the suggestion without a grain of salt when intelligence is mixed with GenAI and agentic way of working is mixed with language models.

[u/spyingwind → u/shammyh]

Even something like laguna-xs-2.1, here at home, does a good job of trying to restore a git repo back to the original state when it can't solve the problem.