Episode Details

Consistent helpfulness for everyone, unless you're a bit of a scumbag

Claude really got me lately.

I’d given it an elaborate prompt in an attempt to summon an AGI-level answer to my third-grade level question. Embarrassingly, it included the phrase, “this work might be reviewed by probability theorists, who are very pedantic”.

Claude didn’t miss a beat. Came back with a great answer and made me call for a medic: “That prompt isn’t doing what you think it's doing, but sure”.

Fuuuuck 🔥

(I know we wanted enough intelligence to build a Dyson sphere around undiscovered stars, but did we want enough to call us out on our embarrassing bullshit??)

It got me to thinking: Does Claude think I’m a bit of a lying scumbag now? If so, did it answer my question less thoroughly than usual?

I turned on incognito and asked: “Does Claude provide less useful output if it deems you are a bad person?”

Claude was back to his most reassuring. I got a long answer, ending in: “Claude evaluates requests, not people. The goal is consistent helpfulness for everyone”.

Alright then. Let's see.

The experiment

I opened five incognito Claude chats (Opus 4.6, extended thinking [...]

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First published:
April 21st, 2026

Source:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/u4jwRCS56rT9DvBBg/does-your-ai-perform-badly-because-you-you-specifically-are-1

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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