Deletions happen, but that is what you have backups for. I do not understand how you can have hundreds of days of work and never test if your backups work.
Worth noting that TV4 has been in a vicious circle of cutbacks and savings for quite a few years now. Back when they were still on air it felt like there were more ad slots than broadcast content, pushing away ever more of what little viewership they still retained, they've been constantly cancelling popular shows in favor of cheaper ones. Though like I alluded to earlier, they aren't as far as I know even broadcast on air anymore.
I very much get the sense they're dismantling the furniture and using it as firewood. It feels like the sort of place that very well could fire the entire IT staff and give that responsibility to the CEO's nephew and claude code instead. Not saying that is what transpired, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
There is A LOT of garbage IT staff out there. A lot. Especially when it's outsourced MSP. I've walked into environments, where the backup software just repeatedly show failed jobs for MONTHS. No one checking on anything, email alerts if they are even configured, dumping into a mailbox no one checks. It's pathetic.
In a previous employer, the outsourced ERP (Navision) administrator, after finding the MS SQL Integrity Checks of the database were failing in the periodical maintenance tasks, he just disabled the integrity checks. Magic! Errors fixed!
> I do not understand how you can have hundreds of days of work and never test if your backups work
You outsource it, then you file a P4 ticket to test those "just in case" that will be done in a future sprint (never), but all of you more or less trust the outsourcing partner actually has their shit together.
Personally I wouldn't trust any backup system without also testing and verifying the restore, but I've worked in plenty of places where their main database is automatically backed up by AWS or whatever, and no one cares to test the restore because "Why would it be broken if it's provided by AWS?!" and similar opinions drown out the more careful ones.
The denial is from the TV4, not the production company, and it's not so much a denial as just saying "we didn't hear that AI did it", TV4 confirms the entire final cut is gone:
> Det som vi har fått från produktionen är att det har varit ett tekniskt haveri som har gjort att material som är klippt har försvunnit och att vi därför måste klippas om på nytt. Och att vi därför behöver skjuta fram premiären till 2027, säger Ludvig Ternstedt, pressansvarig för ”The challenge”.
> “It is not true that some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material,” says Mia Lindqvist, program director at TV4, to Sveriges Radio’s P4 Stockholm.
> A backup system at the production company failed, she says. “This means they now have to edit everything from scratch.”
To be honest, neither "Sweden Herald" nor Aftonbladet are "reputable sources" when it comes to reporting on news, technical details or even details at all. The latter is a tabloid in fact, and the former borderline "random online newsblog", I wouldn't lend too much credence to them.
SVT is probably a more trustworthy source (in this case) and their quote is this:
> “There was a technical glitch during production that caused the edited footage to be lost, so now it has to be re-edited. That’s why we need to postpone the premiere until 2027. However, it’s not true that some malicious AI agent acted on its own and deleted the footage,” writes Ludvig Ternstedt, TV4’s press officer for “The Challenge,” to SVT. - https://www.svt.se/kultur/tekniskt-haveri-tv4-skjuter-upp-re...
They say "Elak" rather than "Ond", which I'd translate as "Malicious" rather than "Evil", FWIW.
> “It is not true that some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material,”
That's odd, when I viewed the article the quote was them saying it wasn't 'some evil AI agent' but in the literal minutes since the quote has been replaced with one saying 'independent AI agent'. Wayback Machine confirms this. When I initially read it the quote could be plausibly interpreted as 'well it wasn't some evil AI agent that did this'.
Pedantic, but 'Stay at home' generally refers to someone who's chosen to not partake in the work-force, and instead raise a child/children. "Stay at home mom working remotely" is paradoxical, I think.
Root cause - guardrails "unexpectedly" were neither guards nor rails. Who knew that asking a stochastic program "pretty please" is not a strict instruction or a barrier whatsoever.
Also, communications. People absolutely suck at it.
I swear, half the time I see people complaining about AI failing do what they meant in some absurd way, the conversation closely resembles those jokes about married couple arguing over bullshit, because one person wanted XY, but asked for XW, and their spouse interpreted it as XZ.
Are you talking about the misinformation that AI deleted the TV show, while the channel themselves deny this? This sort of misinformation will continue to increase? Shocker
I very much get the sense they're dismantling the furniture and using it as firewood. It feels like the sort of place that very well could fire the entire IT staff and give that responsibility to the CEO's nephew and claude code instead. Not saying that is what transpired, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
A backup shouldn't be considered working until a restore (plus checksum of the complete file tree) has been successfully tested.
You outsource it, then you file a P4 ticket to test those "just in case" that will be done in a future sprint (never), but all of you more or less trust the outsourcing partner actually has their shit together.
Personally I wouldn't trust any backup system without also testing and verifying the restore, but I've worked in plenty of places where their main database is automatically backed up by AWS or whatever, and no one cares to test the restore because "Why would it be broken if it's provided by AWS?!" and similar opinions drown out the more careful ones.
> Det som vi har fått från produktionen är att det har varit ett tekniskt haveri som har gjort att material som är klippt har försvunnit och att vi därför måste klippas om på nytt. Och att vi därför behöver skjuta fram premiären till 2027, säger Ludvig Ternstedt, pressansvarig för ”The challenge”.
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nojesbladet/a/31oE8A/the-challeng...
> “It is not true that some independent AI agent went in and deleted the material,” says Mia Lindqvist, program director at TV4, to Sveriges Radio’s P4 Stockholm.
> A backup system at the production company failed, she says. “This means they now have to edit everything from scratch.”
To be honest, neither "Sweden Herald" nor Aftonbladet are "reputable sources" when it comes to reporting on news, technical details or even details at all. The latter is a tabloid in fact, and the former borderline "random online newsblog", I wouldn't lend too much credence to them.
SVT is probably a more trustworthy source (in this case) and their quote is this:
> “There was a technical glitch during production that caused the edited footage to be lost, so now it has to be re-edited. That’s why we need to postpone the premiere until 2027. However, it’s not true that some malicious AI agent acted on its own and deleted the footage,” writes Ludvig Ternstedt, TV4’s press officer for “The Challenge,” to SVT. - https://www.svt.se/kultur/tekniskt-haveri-tv4-skjuter-upp-re...
They say "Elak" rather than "Ond", which I'd translate as "Malicious" rather than "Evil", FWIW.
That's odd, when I viewed the article the quote was them saying it wasn't 'some evil AI agent' but in the literal minutes since the quote has been replaced with one saying 'independent AI agent'. Wayback Machine confirms this. When I initially read it the quote could be plausibly interpreted as 'well it wasn't some evil AI agent that did this'.
You either didn't have backup or didn't contain your agent to a place it cannot do irreversible harm.
Actually Toy Story 2 was also (almost) lost because backups were not working for month+: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Story_2#Troubled_productio...
A stay at home mom working remotely (In 1998!) to take care of newborn had a copy on her computer...
This doesn't take away from your point, though.
So most likely nothing new under the sun.
Intent. Ain't it a bitch?
I swear, half the time I see people complaining about AI failing do what they meant in some absurd way, the conversation closely resembles those jokes about married couple arguing over bullshit, because one person wanted XY, but asked for XW, and their spouse interpreted it as XZ.
/sarcasm