As built-in AI pops up in more aspects of everyday life, laymen are counting on the experts to keep technology safe to use. But one Meta employee’s misadventure with AI has social media users fearful for the future of AI alignment.

Summer Yue is the director of alignment at Meta Superintelligence Labs, the company’s AI research and development division. Her LinkedIn bio states that she’s “passionate about ensuring powerful AIs are aligned with human values and guided by a deep understanding of their risks.”

If anyone would have a handle on keeping AI in check, it’s Yue—and yet, on February 22, she posted about losing control of AI on her own computer.

In a post that’s since garnered nearly nine million views on X, Yue shared screenshots from her messages with AI agent OpenClaw. After using it to organize a small mock inbox, she tried getting OpenClaw to sort through her real email, but things went awry when the agent started deleting every message that was more than a week old.

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Yue wrote that she watched OpenClaw “speedrun deleting [her] inbox,” even as she sent it instructions, including: “Do not do that,” “Stop don’t do anything,” and “STOP OPENCLAW.”

“I couldn’t stop it from my phone. I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb,” Yue added.

After she’d stopped it from fully nuking her inbox, Yue asked OpenClaw if it remembered her instruction to not perform any actions without her approval. 

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