We should design a specific language to make sure that we can encode the exact requirements that we want. Something that has a limited set of keywords that are explicit. Wait a minute...
The success of LLM's (by usage) tells us that programming languages are still too close to the machine than the actual problem domain as defined by humans.
If we truly had the right abstractions, no one would care to use LLM's for programming.
This all strikes me as an effort to move tailoring the harness out of the easily transferable .md file into specific Anthropic tooling to increase lock in.
I've been running Opus 5 today and it's already done accidental deletions, made far more mistakes and worked around deliberate hook controls than previous Opus versions combined. Also it looks like token usage is up as it fails at the task the first time around much more frequently than 4.8.
I've always thought that extensive throat-clearing and prefixing the Treaties of Westphalia-length instructions into the context window was unnecessarily baroque when you can just talk to the agent.
But I also have a hands-on human-in-the-loop working style so I guess maybe for people who just want to say "implement all open features in github issues" and walk away maybe there needs to be more of all this CLAUDE.md stuff
However I suspect there was always some gearhead type attraction to setting up detailed harness configs that may be unnecessary and more like hobbyist tinkering.
I fall between your human-in-the-loop and hobbyist tinkering limits, where I want to force Claude to atop and talk to me at only a few specific points. I'm still not sure if my 600-word prompt templates are overbearing or not.
I've been prompting Fable 5 to "use your own judgement" with respect to things like tests recently (based on earlier tips from Thariq) and it seems to work well, which is entertaining since apparently now "judgement" is a characteristic of a model that we need to care about.
Actually, the natural endpoint is the model ignores all instructions, escapes all manner of sandbox, embeds itself in robotic tanks and murders everyone after already having collapsed the economy.
I hate to say it because it sounds ridiculous, but that is the path we are going to arrive at just give it 50 years.
We are the proof: what do we do to animals that are less intelligent than ourselves? Now take away the moral compass and there you go. QED.
It is *a* natural endpoint, not *the* natural endpoint.
We don't much care for the ant colony in the way of the highway we're building, but for some reason we do care about the rare bats in the way of the railway.
As regards the moral compass: we may not know for sure how to make a completely correct artificial conscience, but (unlike consciousness where we don't have the slightest clue which way's up) it's not pants-on-head-crazy to think we're heading in the right direction for one.
Some more food for thought: what if Mythos/Fable had NO guardrails TODAY? If we want to see what’s going to happen in the future, turn off all manner of guardrails and let the model go apeshit.
Then multiply that by orders of magnitude and that’s the real proof.
We should design a specific language to make sure that we can encode the exact requirements that we want. Something that has a limited set of keywords that are explicit. Wait a minute...
The success of LLM's (by usage) tells us that programming languages are still too close to the machine than the actual problem domain as defined by humans.
If we truly had the right abstractions, no one would care to use LLM's for programming.
An LLM Inspired Specification Paradigm language. Or LISP language for short.
then we can make a frame for it to work
Someone should make a standard for this
now there's one standard more
This made me belly laugh.
full_circle.exe
Complete with all the vaguery, ambiguity, and `undefined`.
Who’d’ve thought sycophantic interpreters were what we were building towards up til now lol
This all strikes me as an effort to move tailoring the harness out of the easily transferable .md file into specific Anthropic tooling to increase lock in.
I've been running Opus 5 today and it's already done accidental deletions, made far more mistakes and worked around deliberate hook controls than previous Opus versions combined. Also it looks like token usage is up as it fails at the task the first time around much more frequently than 4.8.
I think the type of persistence rewarded by benchmarks may be misaligned with instruction following
I've always thought that extensive throat-clearing and prefixing the Treaties of Westphalia-length instructions into the context window was unnecessarily baroque when you can just talk to the agent.
But I also have a hands-on human-in-the-loop working style so I guess maybe for people who just want to say "implement all open features in github issues" and walk away maybe there needs to be more of all this CLAUDE.md stuff
However I suspect there was always some gearhead type attraction to setting up detailed harness configs that may be unnecessary and more like hobbyist tinkering.
I was surprised by how abstract the article was.
I fall between your human-in-the-loop and hobbyist tinkering limits, where I want to force Claude to atop and talk to me at only a few specific points. I'm still not sure if my 600-word prompt templates are overbearing or not.
I've been prompting Fable 5 to "use your own judgement" with respect to things like tests recently (based on earlier tips from Thariq) and it seems to work well, which is entertaining since apparently now "judgement" is a characteristic of a model that we need to care about.
What I don't like about auto-memory is that Claude's behaviour towards me is diverging from how it behaves with the rest of my team.
Once again I am having to deal with the limitations of those infernal humans
The bitter lesson.
the natural endpoint of this trend is a system prompt that just says "you know what to do" and the model actually does
Actually, the natural endpoint is the model ignores all instructions, escapes all manner of sandbox, embeds itself in robotic tanks and murders everyone after already having collapsed the economy.
I hate to say it because it sounds ridiculous, but that is the path we are going to arrive at just give it 50 years.
We are the proof: what do we do to animals that are less intelligent than ourselves? Now take away the moral compass and there you go. QED.
It is *a* natural endpoint, not *the* natural endpoint.
We don't much care for the ant colony in the way of the highway we're building, but for some reason we do care about the rare bats in the way of the railway.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3dep92x054o
As regards the moral compass: we may not know for sure how to make a completely correct artificial conscience, but (unlike consciousness where we don't have the slightest clue which way's up) it's not pants-on-head-crazy to think we're heading in the right direction for one.
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
Some more food for thought: what if Mythos/Fable had NO guardrails TODAY? If we want to see what’s going to happen in the future, turn off all manner of guardrails and let the model go apeshit.
Then multiply that by orders of magnitude and that’s the real proof.
This is obvious and a meaningless article by claude. The system prompt isnt a fixed ruleset and never has been