Why can't I trust AI agents with production tasks?
Autonomous AI tools remain too unreliable for critical operational workflows, forcing engineers to restrict them to basic read-only queries like code searches. This lack of reliability prevents system administrators from safely delegating routine automation or granting write access to production environments.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Using AI strictly as a glorified search engineDid this help you?
- 2Restricting AI usage to read-only tasks rather than write accessDid this help you?
- 3Approving every single step manually instead of giving full ownershipDid this help you?
- 4Restricting agents to read-only access or search enginesDid this help you?
- 5Locking down CRM permissions using baseline security principlesDid this help you?
- 6Relying on governance tools and monitoring solutionsDid this help you?
- 7Doing tasks manuallyDid this help you?
- 8Spending time on context-switching across the monthDid this help you?
- 9leaving error response ad hoc and undocumented until it becomes a crisisDid this help you?
- 10having whoever notices the failure first resolve itDid this help you?
- 11assigning a named person whose job is to acknowledge the gap, contain the impact, and log itDid this help you?
- 12Patching within defined maintenance windows with sanity checks, such as delaying updates by 1-2 weeks and rolling them out incrementally in rings.Did this help you?
- 13Using SSH keys, locking down access to the control node, and enforcing least privilege permissionsDid this help you?
- 14Keeping secrets in a secure vault rather than plain textDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“In most operations I have seen, the workflow has an owner and the output has a destination, but the space between a silent failure and a human response is nobody's job until it becomes a crisis.”source ↗
“When something automated produces the wrong output, is there a named owner, or does it get resolved by whoever notices first?”source ↗
“Bank reconciliations: every month matching transactions. Five seconds each time, but it's 40 minutes of context-switching across a month. Same with chasing overdue invoices. Automation exists, but trusting it enough to fully hand it off is hard or doesn't work neatly.”source ↗
“Not sure the best approach on to how. But letting it create and work with real records scares me. As it can be pretty unpredictable, and can find workarounds pretty easily, not fls or permission workarounds but our customizations workarounds.”source ↗
“Would you trust an agent with write access to production today?”source ↗
“With AI unreliability being what it is, nothing.”source ↗
“I don’t use it for anything more than a glorified search engine.”source ↗
“I'd be very weary about attempting to "auto remediate" something for compliance or vulnerability, especially if it deals with lower-level coding languages you can't read, or in my case screwing with a lot of the system that you don't fully understand (me and RHEL hardening).”source ↗
“Lol sorry , like the risk 0 never existe , and for the infra i want to use a local server as the ansible server , and the clients will be on the cloud”source ↗
“So i have some servers to manage and it in a load balancing architecture, it hold sensitive data , and need to be careful with it , so i k ansible can automate the process , but i'm wondering if it secure enough, like the server side .”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 10Is it safe to use AI for business financial data?
- 12Why do simple CRM automations get so complicated?
- 4How to delegate repetitive tasks without giving too much system access
- 4What is my job now that AI does half of it?
- 9What to do when your boss uses AI to write everything
- 18Why is modern IT work so boring and automated?