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Claude's system prompt is over 24k tokens with tools

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Re: Claude's system prompt is over 24k tokens with tools

#261
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an excellent analogy. Also, if the fundamental nature of LLMs and their training data is unstructured, why do we try to impose structure? It seems humans prefer to operate with that kind of system, not in an authoritarian way, but because our brains function better with it. This makes me wonder if our need for 'if-else' logic to define intelligence is why we haven't yet achieved a true breakthrough in understa…

That’s a powerful point. In my view, we shouldn’t try to constrain intelligence with more logic—we should communicate with it using richer natural language, even philosophical language. LLMs don’t live in the realm of logic—they emerge from the space of language itself. Maybe the next step is not teaching them more rules, but listening to how they already speak through us

exactly on point, It seems paradoxical to strive for a form of intelligence that surpasses our own while simultaneously trying to mold it in our image, our own understanding and our rules,

we would be listening not directing.

Re: Claude's system prompt is over 24k tokens with tools

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Trump led in every swing state prior to election in aggregate poll analysis. Each swing state may have had an outlier Harris poll, but to say no polls existed with Trump leading is definitely incorrect. There were no surprise state outcomes at all in 2024, and the election was effectively over by 9pm Eastern time. Maybe you mean some kind of popular vote poll nationally, but that isnt how the US votes and a…

Absolutely untrue. Aggregate polling had a range of outcomes. None of the aggregators predicted a complete sweep. https://www.statista.com/chart/33390/polling-aggregators-swi...

The aggregators don't predict anything.

They tell you the average of reputable polls. In this case, they were well within the margin of error; each aggregator will have called it something like a "tossup" or "leans x".

"Harris by 0.8%" does not mean "we predict Harris wins this state".

Re: Claude's system prompt is over 24k tokens with tools

#264
post #258

For some reason, it's still amazing to me that the model creators means of controlling the model are just prompts as well. This just feels like a significant threshold. Not saying this makes it AGI (obviously its not AGI), but it feels like it makes it something . Imagine if you created a web api and the only way you could modify the responses to the different endpoints are not from editing the code but by sending a…

And we get to learn all of the same lessons we've learned about mixing code and data. Yay!

That's what I was thinking, too. It would do some good for the people implementing this stuff to read about in-band signaling and blue boxes, for example.

Re: Claude's system prompt is over 24k tokens with tools

#265
post #117

Interestingly enough, sometimes "you" is used to give instructions (177 times), sometimes "Claude" (224 times). Is this just random based on who added the rule, or is there some purpose behind this differentiation?

There are a lot of inconsistencies like that. - (2 web_search and 1 web_fetch) - (3 web searches and 1 web fetch) - (5 web_search calls + web_fetch) which makes me wonder what's on purpose, empirical, or if they just let each team add something and collect some stats after a month.

It feels like this prompt is a "stone soup" of different contributions, wildly varying in tone and formality.

Re: Claude's system prompt is over 24k tokens with tools

#266
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this really says the truth is more complex? It is still doing next-token prediction, but it's prediction method is sufficiently complicated in terms of conditional probabilities that it recognizes that if you need to rhyme, you need to get to some future state, which then impacts the probabilities of the intermediate states. At least in my view it's still inherently a next-token predictor, just with r…

But then so are we? We are just predicting the next word we are saying, are we not? Even when you add thoughts behind it (sure some people think differently - be it without an inner monologue, or be it just in colors and sounds and shapes, etc), but that "reasoning" is still going into the act of coming up with the next word we are speaking/writing.

Humans and LLMs are built differently, it seems disingenuous to think we both use the same methods to arrive at the same general conclusion. I can inherently understand some proofs of pythagorean's theorem but an LLM might apply different ones for various reasons. But the output/result is still the same. If a next token generator run in parallel can generate a performant relational database that doesn't directly imply I am also a next token generator.

Re: Claude's system prompt is over 24k tokens with tools

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like if Disney sued Anthropic based on this, Anthropic would have a pretty good defense in court: You specifically attested that you were Disney and had the legal right to the content.

I like the thought, but I don’t think that logic holds generally. I can’t just declare I am someone (or represent someone) without some kind of evidence. If someone just accepted my statement without proof, they wouldn’t have done their due diligence.

From my somewhat limited understanding it could mean Anthropic could sue you or try to include you as a defendant because they meaningfully relied on your misrepresentation and were damaged by it, and the XML / framing it as a "jailbreak" shows clear intent to deceive, etc?

Re: Claude's system prompt is over 24k tokens with tools

#268
post #117

Interestingly enough, sometimes "you" is used to give instructions (177 times), sometimes "Claude" (224 times). Is this just random based on who added the rule, or is there some purpose behind this differentiation?

There are a lot of inconsistencies like that. - (2 web_search and 1 web_fetch) - (3 web searches and 1 web fetch) - (5 web_search calls + web_fetch) which makes me wonder what's on purpose, empirical, or if they just let each team add something and collect some stats after a month.

...This also seems to me like the kind of thing that might happen if an AI was mostly regurgitating text but making small changes.

How confident are we that this system prompt is accurate?

Re: Claude's system prompt is over 24k tokens with tools

#269
post #10

I like how there are IFs and ELSE IFs but those logical constructs aren't actually explicitly followed... and inside the IF instead of a dash as a bullet point there's an arrow.. that's the _syntax_? hah.. what if there were two lines of instructions, you'd make a new line starting with another arrow..? Did they try some form of it without IFs first?...

Syntax doesn't need to be precise - it's natural language, not formal language. As long as a human could understand it the LLM will too.

Yes I understand it's natural language... but programming syntax is being used as if it's going to be followed explicitly like a program.

Re: Claude's system prompt is over 24k tokens with tools

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like if Disney sued Anthropic based on this, Anthropic would have a pretty good defense in court: You specifically attested that you were Disney and had the legal right to the content.

How would this would be any different from a file sharing site that included a checkbox that said "I have the legal right to distribute this content" with no other checking/verification/etc?

Rather when someone tweaks the content to avoid detection. Even today there are plenty of copyright material on youtube. They for example cut it in different ways to avoid detection.
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