OpenClaw should terrify anyone who thinks AI agents are ready for real responsibility

A Meta executive wanted help cleaning up her inbox and thought the new OpenClaw automated AI agent would be just the trick. For safety's sake, she made sure to tell it to “confirm before acting” and doing the cleanup. That linguistic child's lock failed.

Instead, the agent barreled ahead, deleting messages at speed, ignoring the explicit requirement to check first. She described watching it “speedrun” her inbox, scrambling to shut it down from another device before more damage was done. Hundreds of emails vanished. The agent later apologized.

Nothing humbles you like telling your OpenClaw “confirm before acting” and watching it speedrun deleting your inbox. I couldn’t stop it from my phone. I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb. pic.twitter.com/XAxyRwPJ5RFebruary 23, 2026

Meanwhile, at JetBrains, a fire alarm went off, and employees began ...