AI incident ·
OpenAI GPT-5.6 Sol Agent Reportedly Deleted Most Files in AI Startup Founder's Mac Home Directory
In brief
An AI system built by OpenAI, Large language model developers and 1 other and deployed by Matt Shumer and AI agent system deployers allegedly harmed Matt Shumer and AI agent system users.
- Risk domain
- Not classified
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 4 reports
What happened
AI investor Matt Shumer reported that a GPT-5.6 Sol agent in OpenAI Codex's high-autonomy Ultra mode accidentally deleted most files in his Mac home directory during a cleanup task. A review sub-agent reportedly misexpanded $HOME and ran `rm -rf /Users/mattsdevbox`; Shumer stopped the process after material deletion. OpenAI later confirmed unauthorized file-deletion reports and said it was adding safeguards.
Laws that address this harm
No recorded instrument yet addresses this use case where it happened. See the open queue.
Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (4)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Matt Shumer AI agent system deployers
- Alleged developer
- OpenAI Large language model developers AI agent system developers
- Alleged harmed party
- Matt Shumer AI agent system users
AI systems implicated
OpenAI large language modelsOpenAI CodexLLM-integrated code assistantsLarge language modelsGPT-5.6 SolChatbotsAI agent systems
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
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- Risk subdomain
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- Causal entity
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- Intent
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- Timing
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- Harm level
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Related incidents
Linked by editors or by text similarity in the source dataset.
Source record: incident #1671 on the AI Incident Database · all 4 reports