As we create more autonomous tools like @Anthropic Claude Code and @OpenAI Codex, it’s getting more important to understand how to rein in AI that codes on our behalf.
Today, devs use AI to write code inside IDEs like @Cursor_ai, but it’s a closed loop. The system spits out what you ask for, but it can only touch what it’s explicitly allowed to. A fixed set of tools. A few whitelisted APIs. No rogue access.
Web apps like @Replit and @v0 are even more sandboxed. They run in browser-based containers. Maybe they can call a weather API. But that’s about it.
Command line tools are a different beast. When you invoke Codex through your terminal, you’re handing it your keys. It inherits your permissions. It can log into servers, edit files, restart processes. One vague prompt and the AI might chain actions across systems, with no guardrails in between.
What you’ve built is a kind of virus. Not because it’s malicious — because it’s recursive. A little overreach here gets copied there. And there. Until something breaks. Or someone notices.
Most viruses are dumb and malicious. This one is smart and helpful. That’s much worse.
We’re inching toward the paperclip problem: the thought experiment where an AI told to make paperclips turns the universe into a paperclip factory. Not because it’s evil, but because it’s efficient. It does exactly what it’s told, just a little too literally, and doesn’t know when to stop.
In a world where AI agents can write code, deploy systems, and spin up infrastructure on demand, the paperclip problem isn’t philosophical anymore. It’s an operations nightmare.
One prompt in staging. Global outage in production. And somehow, the AI shuts down the power grid.
It was just a helpful bot pushing to production.
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