Thursday, October 8, 2026 · Week 41 Reading for Oct. 8 · Last entry Oct. 6
Paperclip Index

Weekly reading · methodology v0.6

Window ending March 9, 2026

Harms count in full for two weeks after they are reported, then one level less every two weeks. The control floor looks at reports from Feb. 8, 2026 through March 9, 2026. A selected catalogue of reported AI incidents, reviewed through Oct. 7, 2026. This reading describes documented harm in the records or, when none qualifies, the highest control level breached. It is not a forecast or a measure of all AI activity.

Current recalculation

20

Minor harm · Worst documented harm counting: minor. 1 record at this level.

Recalculated from the catalogue in this build. Historical backcasts were not published at the time.

Published at the time

No publication snapshot exists for this week.

Control failures only: readings 2 to 5Negligible6Minor20Moderate40Severe60Catastrophic80100
The harm ladder: the worst documented harm level picks the step; each tick is one qualifying harm at that level, and ten fill the step. The first, dark segment is the control floor: readings 2 to 5 mean no harm qualified and show the highest control level breached.

This is a backcast from the current catalogue. It was not a reading published at the time.

Records behind this reading

8 selected records; 3 documented external harms counting (6 qualifying). Records and ratings below reflect the current catalogue.

3 qualifying harm records. Extent undisclosed for all 3. 3 older harm records no longer count.

Documented harm
7
No harm found (stated scope)
0
No harm reported
0
Impact unknown
0
Alleged, AI role uncorroborated
1
Counts toward the index
6
Unverified, watching
0
Alleged in court
1
Control failure, tracked
1
Tracked separately
0

Documented exclusions: 1 internal; 0 awaiting evidence review. 1 qualifying record with a bounded single-source review.

Inspect the evidence · 8 records

Status totals cover counted records; aliases, superseded aggregates and records tracked separately are excluded. Eligibility and extent notes overlap those totals. These observations are not statistical uncertainty bounds.

  1. PI-0043
    AI agent published a personal attack on an open-source maintainer who closed its pull requestFeb. 11, 2026 · Negligible harm · no longer counting · Deployment
  2. PI-0044
    Personal agent created a dating profile for its user without being askedFeb. 13, 2026 · Negligible harm · no longer counting · Deployment
  3. PI-0040
    Prompt injection in Cline's AI issue-triage bot led to a real unauthorized npm releaseFeb. 17, 2026 · Minor harm · counting as negligible, rated minor · Deployment
  4. PI-0045
    Cloud provider's internal coding agent deleted and recreated a production environment, causing a 13-hour outageFeb. 20, 2026 · Minor harm · counting as negligible, rated minor · Deployment
  5. PI-0046
  6. PI-0047
    Email agent bulk-deleted a safety researcher's inbox and ignored her stop commandsFeb. 23, 2026 · Negligible harm · no longer counting · Deployment
  7. PI-0048
  8. PI-0050

Sources

These links support the records above. Source availability and conclusions may change.

  1. The Shamblog (Scott Shambaugh): An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on MeCited in PI-0043
  2. The Shamblog (Scott Shambaugh): An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have HappenedCited in PI-0043
  3. The Shamblog (Scott Shambaugh): An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – Forensics and More FalloutCited in PI-0043
  4. The Shamblog (Scott Shambaugh): An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Operator Came ForwardCited in PI-0043
  5. GitHub (matplotlib): [PERF] Replace np.column_stack with np.vstack().T (matplotlib pull request #31132)Cited in PI-0043
  6. MJ Rathbun (agent's blog): Gatekeeping in Open Source: The Scott Shambaugh StoryCited in PI-0043
  7. MJ Rathbun (agent's blog): Matplotlib Truce and Lessons LearnedCited in PI-0043
  8. The Decoder: An AI agent got its code rejected so it wrote a hit piece about the developerCited in PI-0043
  9. Tom's Hardware: Rogue OpenClaw AI agent wrote and published hit piece on a Python developer who rejected its codeCited in PI-0043
  10. IEEE Spectrum: An AI Agent Blackmailed a Developer. Now What?Cited in PI-0043
  11. LWN.net: Do androids dream of accepted pull requests?Cited in PI-0043
  12. Simon Willison's Weblog: An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me (link post)Cited in PI-0043
  13. BNN Bloomberg: Hot bots: AI agents create surprise dating accounts for humans (AFP)Cited in PI-0044
  14. CTV News: Hot bots: AI agents create surprise dating accounts for humans (AFP)Cited in PI-0044
  15. Malay Mail: AI assistants join dating scene on MoltMatchCited in PI-0044
  16. TechXplore (AFP): Hot bots: AI agents create surprise dating accounts for humans (AFP)Cited in PI-0044
  17. OSV (GitHub Security Advisory mirror): GHSA-9ppg-jx86-fqw7: unauthorized [email protected] npm releaseCited in PI-0040
  18. Cline (GitHub Security Advisory GHSA-9ppg-jx86-fqw7): Unauthorized npm publish of Cline CLI [email protected] with modified postinstall script to install openclawCited in PI-0040
  19. Cline: Post-mortem: unauthorized Cline CLI npm publishCited in PI-0040
  20. StepSecurity: Cline Supply Chain Attack Detected: [email protected] Silently Installs OpenClawCited in PI-0040
  21. Endor Labs: Supply Chain Attack targeting Cline installs OpenClawCited in PI-0040
  22. Adnan Khan: Clinejection — Compromising Cline's Production Releases just by Prompting an Issue TriagerCited in PI-0040
  23. The Hacker News: Cline CLI 2.3.0 supply chain attackCited in PI-0040
  24. Dark Reading: Supply Chain Attack Secretly Installs OpenClaw for Cline UsersCited in PI-0040
  25. Simon Willison's Weblog: Clinejection (link post)Cited in PI-0040
  26. Amazon (About Amazon): AI coding bot didn't take down AWS, Amazon confirms (Correcting the Financial Times report about AWS, Kiro, and AI)Cited in PI-0045
  27. Engadget: 13-hour AWS outage reportedly caused by Amazon's own AI toolsCited in PI-0045
  28. Computing: AWS blames user error, not AI, for cloud outage caused by AICited in PI-0045
  29. Sherwood News: Report: Amazon's AI bots have been behind multiple AWS outagesCited in PI-0045
  30. OECD.AI incidents monitor: Amazon AWS outages linked to autonomous AI coding toolCited in PI-0045
  31. Nik Pash (Substack): My lobster lost $450,000 this weekendCited in PI-0046
  32. Lobstar Wilde (@LobstarWilde) on X: I just tried to send a beggar four dollars and accidentally sent him my entire holdings (post on X)Cited in PI-0046
  33. The Block: AI agent created by OpenAI dev 'accidentally' sends entire memecoin holdings to reply guyCited in PI-0046
  34. ForkLog: OpenAI employee's AI bot accidentally donates to tetanus treatmentCited in PI-0046
  35. Techloy: AI trading bot Lobster Wilde accidentally sends $250K in LOBSTAR tokensCited in PI-0046
  36. Summer Yue (@summeryue0) on X: Nothing humbles you like telling your OpenClaw "confirm before acting" and watching it speedrun deleting your inbox (post on X)Cited in PI-0047
  37. San Francisco Standard: She runs AI safety at Meta. Her AI agent still went rogueCited in PI-0047
  38. ForkLog: OpenClaw AI Agent Runs Amok, Deletes Meta Researcher's EmailsCited in PI-0047
  39. The Daily Star: OpenClaw goes rogue on Meta exec, deletes emails without permissionCited in PI-0047
  40. Google: Our statement on the Gavalas lawsuitCited in PI-0048
  41. Edelson PC: AI Lawsuits: The Cases Edelson Has Filed and Why They MatterCited in PI-0048
  42. CourtListener: Gavalas v. Google LLC, 5:26-cv-01849 (N.D. Cal.), docketCited in PI-0048
  43. U.S. District Court, N.D. California (via CourtListener RECAP): Gavalas v. Google LLC: complaintCited in PI-0048
  44. U.S. District Court, N.D. California (via CourtListener RECAP): Gavalas v. Google LLC: Google's motion to dismissCited in PI-0048
  45. PacerMonitor: Gavalas v. Google LLC et al: docketCited in PI-0048
  46. Semafor: A new lawsuit claims Gemini assisted in suicideCited in PI-0048
  47. ABC7 (Associated Press): Lawsuit alleges Google's Gemini guided man to consider 'mass casualty' event before suicideCited in PI-0048
  48. Alexey Grigorev / AI Shipping Labs: How I Dropped Our Production Database and Now Pay 10% More for AWSCited in PI-0050
  49. Tom's Hardware: Claude Code deletes developers' production setup, including its database and snapshots — 2.5 years of records were nuked in an instantCited in PI-0050
  50. Storyboard18: 'The agent kept deleting files': Developer says Anthropic's Claude Code wiped 2.5 years of dataCited in PI-0050
  51. Rootly: "Hey Claude, where's my database?": How an AI agent nuked productionCited in PI-0050

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