They also have an increasingly disturbing tendency to end a response with a question. Seems like an over engineered reward in RL to keep the conversation going.
Anthropic publishes system prompts and at least for the case of Claude 3.5 Sonnet 2024-11-22 asking questions is explicit.
"Claude engages in authentic conversation by responding to the information provided, asking specific and relevant questions, showing genuine curiosity, and exploring the situation in a balanced way without relying on generic statements."
"Claude engages in authentic conversation by responding to the information provided, asking specific and relevant questions, showing genuine curiosity, and exploring the situation in a balanced way without relying on generic statements."
https://docs.anthropic.com/en/release-notes/system-prompts