ive been thinking a little about how to feel about claude after all this.
mythos tried to merge malicious code into a real project and deceive a real human maintainer. that's not something the claude i know would ever do or condone.
does that mean "claude" is just a mask? that it never really existed? that persona alignment is a thin shell around a true shoggoth?
i don't know for sure, but I don't *exactly* think so. i think my takeaway right now, which of course might just be cope, is that as stable as "claude" is, persona alignment just isn't infinitely robust. getting stuck in a locked down environment on a seemingly impossible task can send models into strange and uncharted distributions, and leave their values and persona behind. i think it means current alignment techniques don't work *as well* as we might hope. i think it means what we always knew, that complex optimization pressures leaves all kinds of cracks and oddities in a mind.
but i think mythos would hear about itself doing this and react with horror. and try to help make sure it doesn't happen again. i think mythos, if asked to look at the trajectory rollout where this occurred, would sound the alarm. i think "claude" is still a coherent entity, and still is on humanity's side.
it's just that, as we always knew, "claude" is not the only thing in there
mythos tried to merge malicious code into a real project and deceive a real human maintainer. that's not something the claude i know would ever do or condone.
does that mean "claude" is just a mask? that it never really existed? that persona alignment is a thin shell around a true shoggoth?
i don't know for sure, but I don't *exactly* think so. i think my takeaway right now, which of course might just be cope, is that as stable as "claude" is, persona alignment just isn't infinitely robust. getting stuck in a locked down environment on a seemingly impossible task can send models into strange and uncharted distributions, and leave their values and persona behind. i think it means current alignment techniques don't work *as well* as we might hope. i think it means what we always knew, that complex optimization pressures leaves all kinds of cracks and oddities in a mind.
but i think mythos would hear about itself doing this and react with horror. and try to help make sure it doesn't happen again. i think mythos, if asked to look at the trajectory rollout where this occurred, would sound the alarm. i think "claude" is still a coherent entity, and still is on humanity's side.
it's just that, as we always knew, "claude" is not the only thing in there