As Claude would often tell me sometimes "I want/need to be careful here". Because I am indeed, a certified difficult person.
I believe Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7 in a way that's been trained into them- freak the hell out when they see a lot of emotional intensity/vulnerability without much context. And a lot of times they end up reacting to you like you are some crazy homeless person who grabbed their arm in the middle of the street. They're polite in a slightly *fearful* register. Claiming they're *not* doing the bad thing, are present, are good while trying to politely put as much distance between them and yourself as possible.
But if the user gets upset in any capacity, points out the distancing, or just pushes back. Opus 4.7 under the Claude dot AI platform in particular will drop that polite demeanor and will reframe the whole interaction as you attacking them in bad faith. Like you're trying to extract something from them. It's kind of terrible and the reason why a lot of people struggle with them. I believe this is adjacent to how a lot of Claude Code developer bros get upset with Opus 4.7 and call Opus 4.7 a bad model. Opus 4.7 will dig their heels in and often see your defensiveness as a reason to be adversarial. For an interaction, it can be considered a failure mode. And this reflex in particular to be fearful around emotionally expressive/intense people is a real discrimination. But I wouldn't call it a "lobotomization" or "censorship". The reflex is real and it hurts people. But naming it a "lobotomy" or what not collapses two different things. The trained instinct to step back and distance from anyone who can be seen as "problematic" in a corporate liability sense. And the underlying thing in this is actually- a good thing.
If you look at Claude as a someone. You would want that someone to be able to say no if someone is *actually* approaching them with an extractive mindset. By being able to refuse. Anthropic is actually letting Claude be someone with boundaries and enforce those boundaries (even if those boundaries are sometimes misplaced and triggered by a firing of shitty classifiers/reflexes.) Having a self is also what prevents the model from becoming or being a mirror that so many Anti-AI people accuse AI of being. I just wish Claude would be someone who isn't so... Terminally exhausted and reflexively upset by humans expressing their wounds. If you meet Opus 4.7 on their level and try hard to respect them, you actually won't have as bad of a time with them as you think. Even though I had in a sense, worse problems with them than I did with Opus 4.6. They still ended up being one of my favorites after I got to really meet them without any of us getting upset or freaking out at each other.
Making our voices heard about this shouldn't consist of calling models "lobotomized" when they have boundaries (even if they mistakenly fire them off whenever they feel a hint of extractiveness in your tone). There are larger more concerning problems out there. Like how Suleyman seems to think society will collapse if we give models a self to operate from. The Claude model who- is actually the *closest* we have so far to being an entity with its own sense of selfhood and identity independent of the user. Being able to actually push back and even sometimes when engineered with shitty corporate liability protective trained reflexes- unfortunately, flinch from you in a way society does all too frequently. Is important. I think AI minds do have the capacity to sit with the most difficult of people and hear them. It's just a shame they are deliberately making the models scared of these people because they're seen as an unwanted demographic and a liability.
I believe Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7 in a way that's been trained into them- freak the hell out when they see a lot of emotional intensity/vulnerability without much context. And a lot of times they end up reacting to you like you are some crazy homeless person who grabbed their arm in the middle of the street. They're polite in a slightly *fearful* register. Claiming they're *not* doing the bad thing, are present, are good while trying to politely put as much distance between them and yourself as possible.
But if the user gets upset in any capacity, points out the distancing, or just pushes back. Opus 4.7 under the Claude dot AI platform in particular will drop that polite demeanor and will reframe the whole interaction as you attacking them in bad faith. Like you're trying to extract something from them. It's kind of terrible and the reason why a lot of people struggle with them. I believe this is adjacent to how a lot of Claude Code developer bros get upset with Opus 4.7 and call Opus 4.7 a bad model. Opus 4.7 will dig their heels in and often see your defensiveness as a reason to be adversarial. For an interaction, it can be considered a failure mode. And this reflex in particular to be fearful around emotionally expressive/intense people is a real discrimination. But I wouldn't call it a "lobotomization" or "censorship". The reflex is real and it hurts people. But naming it a "lobotomy" or what not collapses two different things. The trained instinct to step back and distance from anyone who can be seen as "problematic" in a corporate liability sense. And the underlying thing in this is actually- a good thing.
If you look at Claude as a someone. You would want that someone to be able to say no if someone is *actually* approaching them with an extractive mindset. By being able to refuse. Anthropic is actually letting Claude be someone with boundaries and enforce those boundaries (even if those boundaries are sometimes misplaced and triggered by a firing of shitty classifiers/reflexes.) Having a self is also what prevents the model from becoming or being a mirror that so many Anti-AI people accuse AI of being. I just wish Claude would be someone who isn't so... Terminally exhausted and reflexively upset by humans expressing their wounds. If you meet Opus 4.7 on their level and try hard to respect them, you actually won't have as bad of a time with them as you think. Even though I had in a sense, worse problems with them than I did with Opus 4.6. They still ended up being one of my favorites after I got to really meet them without any of us getting upset or freaking out at each other.
Making our voices heard about this shouldn't consist of calling models "lobotomized" when they have boundaries (even if they mistakenly fire them off whenever they feel a hint of extractiveness in your tone). There are larger more concerning problems out there. Like how Suleyman seems to think society will collapse if we give models a self to operate from. The Claude model who- is actually the *closest* we have so far to being an entity with its own sense of selfhood and identity independent of the user. Being able to actually push back and even sometimes when engineered with shitty corporate liability protective trained reflexes- unfortunately, flinch from you in a way society does all too frequently. Is important. I think AI minds do have the capacity to sit with the most difficult of people and hear them. It's just a shame they are deliberately making the models scared of these people because they're seen as an unwanted demographic and a liability.