My AI spreadsheet assistant deleted a whole column of donor data last week

I was at my desk in Chicago, trying to get our nonprofit's end-of-year donation reports ready. I thought I'd be clever and use this AI tool that plugs into Google Sheets to clean up duplicate entries. It ran for maybe 30 seconds, then just deleted column F, which had all the donation amounts from the last 3 months. I felt my stomach drop because we had no backup from the previous day. I spent the next 4 hours manually re-entering data from printed receipts and email confirmations. The AI didn't even log what it did, so I couldn't undo it. Now I only run AI tools on a copy of the sheet first. Has anyone else had an AI screw up their data that bad?

3 comments

3 Comments

paigep202mo ago

You ever notice how nobody talks about the quiet way AI tools can make you trust them too fast? Like, you use it for one small thing, it works fine, then you let it do something bigger without double-checking first. I did that with a scheduling bot once, it merged my calendar events with someone else's calendar and I showed up to a board meeting three hours early. The worst part is you can't even yell at it, you just sit there feeling stupid for handing over control. That column F thing though, that's brutal, I'd probably still be staring at the screen in shock.

sarah5312mo ago

Right @paigep20, always set a hard rule to double-check anything automated that touches real life data.

sandrat2426d ago

I don't know, maybe we're getting too scared of our own tools. Like, a scheduling bot messing up isn't the AI's fault, it's just a buggy app. People mess up calendar invites all the time too, right? That column F thing sounds horrible, but it's also a good reminder that automation is just a tool, not a trap.