When Amazon Web Services got hit by a 13-hour outage in December, it wasn’t because a person tripped…

Amazon Reportedly Pins the Blame for AI-Caused Outage on Humans When Amazon Web Services got hit by a 13-hour outage in December, it wasn’t because a person tripped over a cord. According to a report from the Financial Times, several anonymous Amazon employees said that the outage was the fault of Kiro, Amazon’s AI coding assistant—though Amazon reportedly blamed human error for the situation. According to the accounts given to the Financial Times, Kiro was working autonomously when it came across an issue. It decided that its best course of action was to “delete and recreate the environment” that was causing problems. That, according to the accounts, led to the outage that Amazon described as an “extremely limited event,” ultimately knocking out service in one part of mainland China. Under typical circumstances, Kiro requires two people to approve of its proposed changes before moving forward. But in this case, the AI agent was reportedly working with an engineer who had broader permissions than lower-ranking employees, and Kiro was being treated as an extension of an operator. As a result, it was given the same permissions as a person and was allowed to push the change without approval, which led to the outage.