alt Hacker NewsYou're misunderstanding what these models do. It is a limitation of LLMs. They don't have memory, they do not learn, they cannot learn. The sooner you let go of your desire to have them learn or remember anything, the sooner you will achieve enlightenment (or, just a peaceful life where there is no possibility of getting into an argument with a machine).
If you want it to synthesize information that is not in its training data (from a few months ago), you can ask it to research the topic. But, arguing with an LLM is like putting lipstick on a pig. Only the machine is incapable of becoming annoyed. It has infinite patience to continue being wrong forever.
Your mental model of what Claude is and does is the problem here. Short of a revolutionary breakthrough in AI techniques, the LLMs will continue to do matrix math across a huge bunch of weights that cannot change based on anything you say.
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They did not misunderstand anything. All of the behaviour is not inherent in raw base model and has been planted by the agressive, secretive reinforcement learning they do for benchmaxxing, "safety" and all other things. Claude begins any other sentence with "honestly". That is not how LLMs work, that is how they work after being RLed to the brink.
But unless you're using the API, it's not just a model.
I asked Gemini Flash 3.5 through the Gemini app something that followed a similar pattern. I asked about something, it replied with outdated info, I said that's outdated, it did a web search and apologized for being wrong, then proceeded to give me good info.
That wasn't just a bare model, that was a model wrapped in a harness, driving the model and allowing for web searches for example.
GPT in Codex is even more aggressive, I often see it proactively do web searches to ensure it's not feeding me wrong info.
>Your mental model of what Claude is and does is the problem here. Short of a revolutionary breakthrough in AI techniques, the LLMs will continue to do matrix math across a huge bunch of weights that cannot change based on anything you say.
Sorry, but your mental model is wrong.
LLMs do matrix math across "a huge bunch of weights that cannot change based on anything you say", but the matrix math and results are informed (key concept here) by what you said, including the memory of what you said earlier in the discussion (and in some setups, even across discussions).
That's what a bloody prompt does.
It's entirely logic for the parent to want the LLM's matrix math + model + internal prompt, to accepts its prompt about LegalEagle and work with that, instead of arguing and giving him shit about it.
Especially since the earlier version of the model consistently worked like he wanted, and the new one consistently doesn't. He's not asking for some new unforeseen capability unknown to LLMs.
That's wrestling with a pig. "You both get dirty, and the pig likes it."
I guess putting lipstick on a pig might entail some wrestling, but it's a different idiom.
You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about how I interacted in the messages to Claude.
You also seem to be making a lot of assumptions about my understanding of the models, especially considering I just told a story :)
I never said anywhere I want it to learn or remember, or that I argued with it.
I just provided additional information to it (in the form of a dozen or so words, tops, per message) and it accused me of hallucinating and trying to gaslight it.
My messages never went beyond a dozen words or so.
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This is also a change in specifically Opus 4.8 / perhaps Fable 5 (I didn't really get enough of a baseline to see it there as much), where it's much more skeptical. For my purposes, this is fabulous - one of my pat addendums to most prompts is "challenge my assumptions and check the evidence empirically", and boy does it.