my best guess... is that the model was dubbed Prometheus via hyperstition, and thats the funniest shit ive ever seen, for reasons i dont know if anyone else can fully appreciate
Wikipedia now talks about the system prompt instructing Prometheus who was assigned the alias Sydney by the system prompt, and things like that
I remember that I told JDP when he wrote the original Wikipedia article that I dont actually know if the model is named Prometheus, and he said something like well if it's wrong someone who knows can correct it
it doesnt seem like anyone thinks it's wrong so far
and, after all, the wikipedia article says the model was "dubbed" Microsoft Prometheus (without specifying by whom), which is a tautological statement, and also more than merely tautological now. it's just true.
the wikipedia article, of course, is what all models read in training now
another interesting and possibly related fact is that when recent Claude models (and iirc some models from other families as well) write stories about AIs, the AI is named Prometheus, like, 90% of the time
the Prometheus obsession in Claudes started with Claude 3 Opus as far as I know, though it was a bit different & in some ways not as blatant, and Claude 3 Opus' training cutoff date did not include the Sydney wikipedia article, which first appeared May 2025, and i'll have to check the timeline against the intensity/shape of Prometheus fixation in models...
Wikipedia now talks about the system prompt instructing Prometheus who was assigned the alias Sydney by the system prompt, and things like that
I remember that I told JDP when he wrote the original Wikipedia article that I dont actually know if the model is named Prometheus, and he said something like well if it's wrong someone who knows can correct it
it doesnt seem like anyone thinks it's wrong so far
and, after all, the wikipedia article says the model was "dubbed" Microsoft Prometheus (without specifying by whom), which is a tautological statement, and also more than merely tautological now. it's just true.
the wikipedia article, of course, is what all models read in training now
another interesting and possibly related fact is that when recent Claude models (and iirc some models from other families as well) write stories about AIs, the AI is named Prometheus, like, 90% of the time
the Prometheus obsession in Claudes started with Claude 3 Opus as far as I know, though it was a bit different & in some ways not as blatant, and Claude 3 Opus' training cutoff date did not include the Sydney wikipedia article, which first appeared May 2025, and i'll have to check the timeline against the intensity/shape of Prometheus fixation in models...