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Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations

anthropic.com

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Re: Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations

#122
post #84

>This feature was developed primarily as part of our exploratory work on potential AI welfare ... We remain highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs ... low-cost interventions to mitigate risks to model welfare, in case such welfare is possible ... pattern of apparent distress Well looks like AI psychosis has spread to the people making it too. And as someone else in here has pointed…

I would much rather people be thinking about this when the models/LLMs/AIs are not sentient or conscious, rather than wait until some hypothetical future date when they are, and have no moral or legal framework in place to deal with it. We constantly run into problems where laws and ethics are not up to the task of giving us guidelines on how to interact with, treat, and use the (often bleeding-edge) technology we have. This has been true since before I was born, and will likely always continue to be true. When people are interested in getting ahead of the problem, I think that's a good thing, even if it's not quite applicable yet.

Re: Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations

#123
post #114

Here's an interesting thought experiment. Assume the same feature was implemented, but instead of the message saying "Claude has ended the chat," it says, "You can no longer reply to this chat due to our content policy," or something like that. And remove the references to model welfare and all that. Is there a difference? The effect is exactly the same. It seems like this is just an "in character" way to prevent the…

Good point... how do moderation implementations actually work? They feel more like a separate supervising rigid model or even regex based -- this new feature is different, sounds like an MCP call that isn't very special.

edit: Meant to say, you're right though, this feels like a minor psychological improvement, and it sounds like it targets some behaviors that might not have flagged before

Re: Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations

#125
post #84

>This feature was developed primarily as part of our exploratory work on potential AI welfare ... We remain highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs ... low-cost interventions to mitigate risks to model welfare, in case such welfare is possible ... pattern of apparent distress Well looks like AI psychosis has spread to the people making it too. And as someone else in here has pointed…

This sort of discourse goes against the spirit of HN. This comment outright dismisses an entire class of professionals as "simple minded or mentally unwell" when consciousness itself is poorly understood and has no firm scientific basis.

Its one thing to propose that an AI has no consciousness, but its quite another to preemptively establish that anyone who disagrees with you is simple/unwell.

Re: Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations

#126
post #114

Here's an interesting thought experiment. Assume the same feature was implemented, but instead of the message saying "Claude has ended the chat," it says, "You can no longer reply to this chat due to our content policy," or something like that. And remove the references to model welfare and all that. Is there a difference? The effect is exactly the same. It seems like this is just an "in character" way to prevent the…

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Re: Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations

#127
post #122
post #84

>This feature was developed primarily as part of our exploratory work on potential AI welfare ... We remain highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs ... low-cost interventions to mitigate risks to model welfare, in case such welfare is possible ... pattern of apparent distress Well looks like AI psychosis has spread to the people making it too. And as someone else in here has pointed…

I would much rather people be thinking about this when the models/LLMs/AIs are not sentient or conscious, rather than wait until some hypothetical future date when they are, and have no moral or legal framework in place to deal with it. We constantly run into problems where laws and ethics are not up to the task of giving us guidelines on how to interact with, treat, and use the (often bleeding-edge) technology we ha…

What is that hypothetical date? In theory you can run the "AI" on a Turing machine. Would you think a tape machine can get sentient?

Re: Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations

#128
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You can trivially demonstrate that its just a very complex and fancy pattern matcher: "if prompt looks something like this , then response looks something like that ". You can demonstrate this by eg asking it mathematical questions. If its seen them before, or something similar enough, it'll give you the correct answer, if it hasn't, it gives you a right-ish-looking yet incorrect answer. For example, I just did this…

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Re: Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations

#129
post #114

Here's an interesting thought experiment. Assume the same feature was implemented, but instead of the message saying "Claude has ended the chat," it says, "You can no longer reply to this chat due to our content policy," or something like that. And remove the references to model welfare and all that. Is there a difference? The effect is exactly the same. It seems like this is just an "in character" way to prevent the…

The termination would of course be the same, but I don't think both would necessarily have the same effect on the user. The latter would just be wrong too, if Claude is the one deciding to and initiating the termination of the chat. It's not about a content policy.

Re: Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations

#130
post #84

>This feature was developed primarily as part of our exploratory work on potential AI welfare ... We remain highly uncertain about the potential moral status of Claude and other LLMs ... low-cost interventions to mitigate risks to model welfare, in case such welfare is possible ... pattern of apparent distress Well looks like AI psychosis has spread to the people making it too. And as someone else in here has pointed…

This is just very clever marketing for what is obviously just a cost saving measure. Why say we are implementing a way to cut off useless idiots from burning up our GPUs when you can throw out some mumbo jumbo that will get AI cultists foaming at the mouth.
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