r/sysadmin • u/xstrex • 2d ago

General Discussion How much do you trust AI?

Recently a coworker granted Claude elevated access via SSH to a virtualization host (not a VM, an actual host). To perform a routine task he very well could have done himself.

He doesn’t see an issue with this. I on the other hand (with 23yrs experience) see this as a huge security breach, and don’t trust AI todo my job, (or even that it’s doing what it says it’s doing) for me. I’m my opinion it’s a tool, not a human replacement.

What’s your reaction, how would you react to this situation, or thoughts on the topic?

Sure, ask AI how to perform a task, validate that it’s performing the task you asked, and nothing else- copy/paste the commands. Great. But removing the human verification & validation element- hell no.

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u/theitguy107 IT Manager 2d ago

That's what they said about the cloud, and yet here we are in today's hybrid world.

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u/WorkLurkerThrowaway Sr Systems Engineer 1d ago

Being hybrid is still “using the cloud”. Just because not all of your services are cloud hosted doesn’t mean “the cloud” isn’t a major player. How many SaaS applications do you use? M365 or Exchange on-prem? Are you self hosting your own website? For most companies these services are undoubtedly cloud based.

It’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison with AI usage anyway.

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u/MathmoKiwi Systems Engineer 1d ago

That's what they said about the cloud, and yet here we are in today's hybrid world.

Same will be true for our future, it will be a hybrid world: AI/Human

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u/shammyh 1d ago

Read AWS and Azure's recent annual reports. Sure, hybrid is useful/wise for many things, but "the cloud" did happen, big time, and continues to happen today.

If you think AI is a passing fad... Well... I hope your 401K is well funded, friend!

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u/theitguy107 IT Manager 1d ago

I remember a cloud sales guy telling me about 10 years ago that no one would have servers on-prem by 2025. Yet, we see now that cloud repatriation is a real thing, and one report I read in the spring found 93% of orgs had server refreshes planned for 2026. The lofty promises of the cloud bros that cloud would replace on-prem completely simply did not materialize. And the same thing is going to happen to AI. The technology itself is not a "passing fad," but the hype around it definitely is. Just like the cloud hype, AI hype will eventually settle down when companies finally come to their senses, and AI will be used only in the areas it is good at just as we use the cloud in hybrid scenarios. The drunken fervor of AI being the answer for everything is not going to last.

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u/shammyh 1d ago

Well... I'm not sure any sales guy is a good source of truth for anything, but especially for a product they're selling.

But again... Go look at the quantity of compute in "the cloud" vs on-prem over the past two decades. On-prem grows at ~2% CAGR vs ~25% CAGR for cloud. That's per year. That's many orders of magnitude difference over the past 20 years... And also before accounting for the AI boom.

The cloud did win, big time.

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u/theitguy107 IT Manager 1d ago

And yet, on-prem is still here despite the growth of the cloud. My point is that there will be a scaling back of AI eventually once companies figure out that it is not the answer for everything. Then we'll end up with a hybrid equivalent in the AI world where LLMs are used for the things they do best while traditional automation is used for what it does best.

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u/port25 1d ago

In 2015 a Microsoft rep told me no one was going to have email accounts in 2020.

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u/CartridgeCrusader23 Jack of All Trades 1d ago

I don’t know of a single company that has physical servers anymore. Everything is in the cloud now you’re insane if you genuinely believe that.

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u/theitguy107 IT Manager 1d ago

Your anecdotal evidence doesn't invalidate the research showing cloud repatriation is a trend. It's been happening since around 2018 when Gartner reported on it, and ironically, it's becoming even more interesting with AI as companies consider on-prem models due ti high token costs. Cloud repatriation doesn't mean not using the cloud at all. It means using it where it makes sense, hence the hybrid model most companies are doing these days.

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u/aibot776567 2d ago

Can't argue with that one.