I have seen bad behavior by Claude Code where it was doing tests of our S3 support, and it overwrote files that were critical to our apps, knocking at least one of them off the air. #
I'm at a loss as to what I should trust it with, because this was in violation of an explicit rule I gave it and a broader one that it added itself. #
On the other hand, the project I'm working on couldn't happen without the use of AI. Far too much code for one person to manage. A program that took several of us years to write, being converted in a matter of weeks to run on modern systems. I'm pretty sure that without AI this work would have been lost, and lots of innovations. #
We humans are doing a fine job of wrecking everything, all on our own, denying climate change, giving into the same old tricks that lead to WWII and the Holocaust, so maybe it isn't the worst idea to turn management of everything over to the machines. #
I don't recall a science fiction story in which the machines took over and they were the good guys in the end, saving us from self-destruction. Aliens, yes -- machines, no. #
And when I'm working with Claude Code I recognize that it's a new form of intelligence, and may be the closest our species ever gets to First Contact. We could embrace it as such. What choice do we have? #
And to Bill Gates, I wish when you were trying to own the web in the 90s, you had thought through the dangers, as you are doing now, and maybe not tried to own it, rather to foster its independence from big tech. Now we have the medium owned by the worst people possible, we exist here mostly to keep them in power, when it had so much promise when you really could have done something real to protect our freedom. I have no idea where we would be now if you had, but it has to be better than this. #
Last update: Wednesday August 26, 2026; 10:15 AM EDT.
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)