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Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?

bramcohen.com

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Re: Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?

#11

Post by akerl_ »

> If you ask it for a cute picture of you and somebody else it has no way of telling if you’re trying to improve your relations with your spouse or be a delusional creepazoid stalker. The chatbots which can make images are programmed to assume the latter, which is more than a little bit offensive.

Are people actually using AI in this way, other than “creepazoid stalkers”?

If I want a cute picture of me and my spouse, usually the part where me and my spouse actually participate in the taking of the picture is pretty key to the goal.

Re: Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?

#12

Post by coldtea »

sscaryterry wrote: post #3

You know what the say about pets taking on the personalities of their owners. Perhaps this is similar ;)

Only here the thing it informs its worldview is 100000000000000000 to 1 the actual user vs generic internet/books stuff and it's actual owner's (Anthropic's) default prompts and allignment training.

Re: Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?

#13

Post by willis936 »

I tried claude again recently and the first response in troubleshooting ignored the context I gave and assumed I was a moron holding it wrong. So smart that I won't even waste my time or money on the thing. The creators want to anthropomorphize it. I just want an efficient assistant. They should focus on the thing that customers want.

Re: Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?

#14

Post by coldtea »

TylerE wrote: post #4
alaskahoffman wrote: post #2

this is what they call a "self-report"

Seriously. Who tries to "win an argument" with/against AI?

It's not about the author trying to "win an argument against AI".

It's about AI turning the discussion into an argument and being compative, and it's especially about the AI doing that in later versions more so that slightly earlier models.

Re: Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?

#16

Post by TacticalCoder »

SwellJoe wrote: post #8

"If you win an argument" Let me stop you right there. I am not arguing with a machine. You sound like a crazy person, when you say you are winning an argument with Claude. Claude is not my friend, I don't need it to agree with me, I don't need it to like me (it cannot like or dislike me). I give it instructions or ask it to explain things. That is the sum total of my interaction with Claude. A machine cannot "argue"…

> A machine cannot "argue" with me, it doesn't want anything nor does it have beliefs or experiences.

Yup I thought that too when reading TFA but then...

It gets really tiring when you see it making glaringly obvious mistakes which you point out because you don't want it to keep making the same mistakes only to be met with an answer that begins with "The point is ...".

I'm not shitting you: Anthropic models shall happily begin a sentence with "The point is ...", when it's not the point and it's just wrong.

Now, to me it's not an issue in that I can change its tone (if anything I can ask another LLM to rewrite me not the code but the english sentences any model spouts out to something nicer) but it is an issue in that you lose time: you just want it to acknowledge its errors so that it stops doing them.

That this thing "argues" (even if we know it doesn't argue) is representative of the fact that it is wrong and refuses to "admit" it (by that I mean: do not consider it important and hence shall keep making the same kind of mistakes).

And that is a problem.

Re: Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?

#17

Post by coldtea »

SwellJoe wrote: post #8

"If you win an argument" Let me stop you right there. I am not arguing with a machine. You sound like a crazy person, when you say you are winning an argument with Claude. Claude is not my friend, I don't need it to agree with me, I don't need it to like me (it cannot like or dislike me). I give it instructions or ask it to explain things. That is the sum total of my interaction with Claude. A machine cannot "argue"…

>I give it instructions or ask it to explain things.

And the author's point is that Claude Fable+ is turning those increasingly into arguments, instead of merely following them and being helpful.

>A machine cannot "argue" with me, it doesn't want anything nor does it have beliefs or experiences.

Who cares if the argument is informed by some felt experiences or lived state or not? That's for the philosophers.

If Claude is writing out combative and argumentative responses that's enough to call it "an argument". And that's the problem the author describes. Not whether it's a "real" argument, or a simulated one.

In that sense, and for all intends and purposes, the machine can still argue just fine, since it's programmed to mimick interaction as if it HAD those beliefs and experiences. Same way it can write a poem about love, despite not having loved, or code, despite never having had used a computer. That's basically what it was made for: to act as an conscious person.

Re: Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?

#18

Post by operatingthetan »

SwellJoe wrote: post #8

"If you win an argument" Let me stop you right there. I am not arguing with a machine. You sound like a crazy person, when you say you are winning an argument with Claude. Claude is not my friend, I don't need it to agree with me, I don't need it to like me (it cannot like or dislike me). I give it instructions or ask it to explain things. That is the sum total of my interaction with Claude. A machine cannot "argue"…

The only point of "arguing" with an LLM is wholly for your own benefit, e.g. to check your biases or assumptions. But since they are easy to make turn around on their own statements it has limited utility.

Unless you are sparring with the Chipotle customer service bot trying to score a free burrito or something.

Re: Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?

#19

Post by bmelton »

SwellJoe wrote: post #8

"If you win an argument" Let me stop you right there. I am not arguing with a machine. You sound like a crazy person, when you say you are winning an argument with Claude. Claude is not my friend, I don't need it to agree with me, I don't need it to like me (it cannot like or dislike me). I give it instructions or ask it to explain things. That is the sum total of my interaction with Claude. A machine cannot "argue"…

My system prompt tells it to first challenge my assumptions, and to feel free to be a dick about it where it thinks I'm off on something, or have assumed facts that aren't actually facts. I sometimes wonder how much of my total spend boils down to forcing LLMs to argue with me, but I do feel like it's yielded better outputs than letting it implement things incorrectly because I told it to.

It's a completely dispassionate exchange tho, because you're absolutely right -- there's no winning or losing here, there's only efficiency to be gained or lost, and I'd prefer to lose some up front to gain it back later than the other way around.

Re: Why Is Claude Turning into an a**Hole?

#20

Post by jampa »

This post needs some examples, because I have never had an interaction with Claude that made me think this way.

LLMs generally have a way to "play a role" (most earlier prompt guides ask you to start with "You are a expert in a "). So maybe if you interact with it by asking questions, it might assume that it knows more than the operator and adopt that attitude?

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