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Claude's new system prompt doesn't want to reproduce song lyrics

simonwillison.net

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Re: Claude's new system prompt doesn't want to reproduce song lyrics

#91
post #89
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean this one? https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/15/porting-justhtml/ I think that's a good illustration of my critical stance. It ends with several open questions: Even if this is legal, is it ethical to build a library in this way? Does this format of development hurt the open source ecosystem? Can I even assert copyright over this, given how much of the work was produced by the LLM? Is it responsible to publi…

I’ll give you credit in my book for raising the questions. I find the answers lacking in an honest engagement with the questions however, which is worse than not answering them in some ways. It is not plausible that the answer to whether or not a certain controversial method is ethical boils down to an anecdote expressed in four sentences. What if the result of the port causes everyone involved in the original to giv…

> What if the result of the port causes everyone involved in the original to give up? What if this capability causes people to harm themselves because they now have no economic value?

Yeah, this is one of the harms of Ai That I don't think is discussed nearly enough: the psychological toll it has on people who see it as devaluing their work and potentially their entire careers.

(I've been calling that "Deep Blue".)

I've been trying to find ways to help there by consistently emphasizing that these tools amplify existing expertise and, if anything, make our skills more valuable than they were before. I do believe that to be true.

My overall approach to all of this has been that I don't think it will be uninvented or banned, so the best we can do is figure out how to apply it as positively as possible and help bring by as many people along with us.

See also "slop" - I helped amplify that term precisely because it's such a great way of classifying negative applications of AI, and hopefully helping stigmatize them.

Hopefully all of the above demonstrates that, while I may not live up to your high standards, I am at least in a different category from the breathless AI boosters that infest Twitter and LinkedIn.

I hope that people who follow my work develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of LLMs as a result.

Re: Claude's new system prompt doesn't want to reproduce song lyrics

#92
post #91
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll give you credit in my book for raising the questions. I find the answers lacking in an honest engagement with the questions however, which is worse than not answering them in some ways. It is not plausible that the answer to whether or not a certain controversial method is ethical boils down to an anecdote expressed in four sentences. What if the result of the port causes everyone involved in the original to giv…

> What if the result of the port causes everyone involved in the original to give up? What if this capability causes people to harm themselves because they now have no economic value? Yeah, this is one of the harms of Ai That I don't think is discussed nearly enough: the psychological toll it has on people who see it as devaluing their work and potentially their entire careers. (I've been calling that "Deep Blue".) I…

> I've been trying to find ways to help there by consistently emphasizing that these tools amplify existing expertise and, if anything, make our skills more valuable than they were before. I do believe that to be true.

I don’t understand why you would believe this when the opposite view is the natural one based on the history of capability increase over the last several years. The tools can now operate at an expert level in many domains and there’s no signs of the capability increase slowing. With this investment in infrastructure, surely the models today will be terrible compared to the ones 2 years from now. Moreover, the goal of these companies is to displace work, not augment it. And I have yet to see them fundamentally err in a single one of their predictions, to my great distress. You simply do not achieve a 25-30 trillion dollar total addressable market by merely augmenting workers.

(There are several reasons I disagree with this point but I digress.)

> I am at least in a different category from the breathless AI boosters that infest Twitter and LinkedIn.

You are the one whose work Anthropic plants Easter eggs of in their product releases. I don’t know what they say on X. I doubt they have the same influence. I have seen many people express incredible contempt for humanity in support of this AI revolution though.

> My overall approach to all of this has been that I don't think it will be uninvented or banned, so the best we can do is figure out how to apply it as positively as possible and help bring by as many people along with us.

We agree that it’s not going to be uninvented. I really am afraid that “us” is just a tiny minority of people who will benefit enormously from this to the detriment of most of the others.

Re: Claude's new system prompt doesn't want to reproduce song lyrics

#93
post #88
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic are uncomfortably interested in "model welfare" in my opinion - it's a regular feature of their system cards. Here's the Fable 5.1 PDF: https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/0339e6a7c5c7b87f5c07798616dc32... - scroll to page 139.

Unless you actually believe there is something magical about the human spirit - someday we are going to make sentient machines. What exactly is wrong with preparing for that ahead of time? Just in case we pass that threshold before we realize it? Why does it make you uncomfortable?

No machine is an animal.

Re: Claude's new system prompt doesn't want to reproduce song lyrics

#94
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you actually believe there is something magical about the human spirit - someday we are going to make sentient machines. What exactly is wrong with preparing for that ahead of time? Just in case we pass that threshold before we realize it? Why does it make you uncomfortable?

No machine is an animal.

I don't understand what you're saying. Could you try again?

Re: Claude's new system prompt doesn't want to reproduce song lyrics

#97
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a good point… you would think AGI would be better at being a copyright lawyer than any human would be and as such would be able to distinguish whether something is “copyright infringement” or not… so the system prompt should just include “make judgement calls on reproducing copyrighted material under the full scope of the legal framework in place” or something.

The thing is, it currently doesn't matter if AGI objectively concludes that a particular thing is or isn't copyright infringement, because the human arbiter who holds the last word might still disagree.

Well I mean, based on what I said, if we truly did have “AGI” then the “AGI” would be able to argue it’s 100% correct point in court according to copyright law, no human intervention. Yes there is lawyers and judges who are making calls in court but allegedly it would be able to construct a concrete argument right? That would hold up in court. Without any buts or ands. Not disagreeing with you, I agree as of now it wouldn’t hold up. But a true “AGI” would be able to pander to anyone better than any PERSON could.

Re: Claude's new system prompt doesn't want to reproduce song lyrics

#98
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We would be doing it now if it wasn't cutting into frontier companies' revenue. Eg if you use Claude, you probably want fable architecting, a couple of opus under it managing sub project and sonnet doing the actual function code, because fable coding a "run a query and filter the result" is a massive waste of abilities. But their own sub agent downgrade is limited to one level so if you use fable it will never direct…

Claude can be told to run OpenCode or other harnesses via CLI. I've been doing this myself, all the time. (The ability to get second opinions and code reviews from Sol and other models is priceless.) There's nothing restricting it to only controlling subagents that are other Claude models like Opus and Sonnet. Also, I'm not sure that there's a one-level downgrade. Subagents can be pinned to any model: https://code.cl…

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Re: Claude's new system prompt doesn't want to reproduce song lyrics

#100

I'm sad about the lyrics restrictions. I used to have interesting conversations with Claude about music, and songwriting and lyrics. I don't see how my use was harming artists, if anything Claude was introducing me to new artists and new music. I've bought music after recommendations by Claude. Claude Sonnet 3.6 once recommended I listen to Johann Johannsson's album "IBM 1401 - A User's Manual". No lyrics in this one…

> IBM 1401 - A User's Manual

Clearly a rare antique tome that was purchased from an unsuspecting book hoarder, scanned in by Anthropic, and then cravenly destroyed according to copyright law and/or Vernor Vinge.

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