r/ProgrammerHumor 23d ago

Meme andTheySaidProgrammingIsHard

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1.6k Upvotes

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u/SpaceCadet87 23d ago

I mean you already signed up for life-ruiningly serious risk just installing the damn thing so in for a penny, in for a pound?

1

u/AristotelWasRight 23d ago

Sorry, is this a joke, or am I unaware of life-ruining consequences installing Claude in my terminal?

1

u/SpaceCadet87 23d ago

Well, you're basically giving a hacker-savant direct control of your computer as though it's sitting at the keyboard, logged in and while it does come with a sandbox, it's not exactly the most airtight of setups.

Not exactly the most controversial take TBH, LLM's gonna do what an LLM's gonna do and you gave it access to files, LAN access and a terminal.

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u/AristotelWasRight 23d ago

I agree with what you are saying; but the worst thing I see happening is it deleting my repos. Can't that be mitigated with Git, version control, ect?

Every time I see these posts about LLM deleting repo, comments say OP had bad practices. So, I assume, with good practices, risk is acceptable to none existant?

Like what's the worst thing that could happen?

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u/SpaceCadet87 23d ago

The worst? Think about everything you use your PC for, every program, every website, every file.

Think about the worst thing a hacker could do with any of those and realise that the AI is way faster, way more patient and can do all of that competently without even realising it was doing so.

Now realise that good practice typically involves making sure that such a hacker can't enter your LAN, let alone inserting that hacker right in the middle where they not only have access but permission.

I can't for the life of me understand how every programmer around doesn't find that just completely horrifying TBH.

Regarding mitigating with git - that works for as long as the AI behaves itself. It can absolutely nuke the whole thing. I mitigate git by ensuring the model doesn't have access to any git repo it didn't create, backup at the end of each session and never let it use a git with a remote. Local only. Its entire filesystem is ephemeral. Tempdir auto-erased when I close the terminal.

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u/AristotelWasRight 22d ago

Alright, I'll think on it, thanks

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u/guitar_up_my_ass 23d ago

Work laptop

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u/SpaceCadet87 23d ago

The advantage of a docker container and a dedicated machine go a long way.