If you had given some instructions to Claude to be strict with you, challenge your assumptions, question you with your thoughts by being the devil’s advocate, it does its job quite well. What we must remember though, is that, it does that job beyond what’s necessary.
We sometimes inadvertently let that personality of Claude lead us through for too long when those instructions no longer hold good.
Here’s an example. I once started a new project and gave some instructions to ask critical questions, to come up with situations that I might not be considering. At first, the results were mind-blowing. I started reaping its rewards right away because the context was provided well and the output was great – helping me think through multiple options, tap into areas that I wouldn’t have thought about myself.
Eventually, my project got into a shape that was mature enough. What I missed to consider was to keep evolving the personality of the instructions I’d provided to Claude earlier. It was a nuanced and detailed version so altering it was not easy either. I procrastinated until I realized this was starting to cause more damage than help.
Finally, when I revisited the instructions, it was all in there. The cynical and becoming more harmful version of myself was sitting in there – duly doing its duty of exactly what I had asked it to do, but going overboard now that the things have changed. It doesn’t have visibility into the minute efforts and time I put into the work. Any new ideas were shot as soon as I brought them up, even if that was helpful one, but AI being AI just stuck to what the ‘input’ was given. When we ask AI to fix into something, it does so with its life. The ‘evolving’ characteristic happens with humans, adapting to what we do, how we perform, based on the observatory skill, not waiting for any ‘text’ or ‘image’ inputs. Thanks to the observatory nature of humans.
So, long story short, if you find your AI conversations turning sour, check if your old instructions still hold good or not. Most probably a clean slate could start becoming helpful.
Leave a Reply