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by Finbarr 135 days ago
AI refusals are fascinating to me. Claude refused to build me a news scraper that would post political hot takes to twitter. But it would happily build a political news scraper. And it would happily build a twitter poster.

Side note: I wanted to build this so anyone could choose to protect themselves against being accused of having failed to take a stand on the “important issues” of the day. Just choose your political leaning and the AI would consult the correct echo chambers to repeat from.
3 comments
tweetle_beetle 135 days ago
The thought that someone would feel comforted by having automated software summarise the output of what is likely the output of automated software and publishing it under their name to impress other humans is so alien to me.
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Finbarr 135 days ago
The whole idea was a bit of a joke and a reflection on how ridiculous it is that people get in trouble for failing to regurgitate the correct takes when certain events occur. It’s like insurance against getting canceled.
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concinds 135 days ago
> Claude refused to build me a news scraper that would post political hot takes to twitter

> Just choose your political leaning and the AI would consult the correct echo chambers to repeat from.

You're effectively asking it to build a social media political manipulation bot, behaviorally identical to the bots that propagandists would create. Shows that those guardrails can be ineffective and trivial to bypass.

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9dev 135 days ago
> Good illustration that those guardrails are ineffective and trivial to bypass.

Is that genuinely surprising to anyone? The same applies to humans, really—if they don't see the full picture, and their individual contribution seems harmless, they will mostly do as told. Asking critical questions is a rare trait.

I would argue its completely futile to even work on guardrails, if defeating them is just a matter of reframing the task in an infinite number of ways.

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ajam1507 135 days ago
> I would argue its completely futile to even work on guardrails

Maybe if humans were the only ones prompting AI models

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groestl 135 days ago
Sounds like your daily interactions with Legal. Each time a different take.
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