Howdy pardner: There's a new chatbot in town

Claude is an alternative to ChatGPT (and others) designed to be less harmful to humanity. (Or so he claims....)

‘I’m new in town, and I ain’t here lookin’ for trouble’. Source: Midjourney.

Meet Claude, the latest entrant in the AI chatbot wars.

Earlier this week, Kevin Roose — the New York Times writer that Bing Chat urged to divorce his wife and run off with it — published an interesting article about Anthropic, the startup behind Claude. It seems the folks at Anthropic are very concerned (you might say obsessed) with the existential threat AI may one day present to humanity.

Which is good, I think. You want tech companies to be aware of their potential for harm, and not just reply to people's questions with a poop emoji. [1]

Anthropic is a spin off of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT; it was started by employees who left OpenAI because they were wary of what ChatGPT (and its ilk) might become. So this AI engine was designed with a 'safety first' ethos, and programmed according to the principles of "Constitutional AI," designed to "align with human values" in a way that is "helpful, honest, and harmless."

The company is about to release Claude 2, an upgrade which is still in public beta. I decided to give Claude a spin for myself, fairly confident I wouldn't cause it to do anything to blow up the planet. And if you're still out there reading this, I think I probably succeeded.

Hit and myth

To its credit, Anthropic is very up front about Claude's limitations. This is the first screen you see once you've created your account. (I used the name Alan Turing, just for fun.) [2]

I began by asking it some questions about my favorite topic: Dan Tynan.

Like the responses I received from ChatGPT, Bing Chat, and Google Bard, Claude was very complimentary (flattery will get you everywhere) and also a bit off. For example:

He is probably best known for being the founding editor of PC World magazine, which he led from the first issue in 1982 to 1989. He helped set the tone and voice of that magazine in its early years.

Umm, no. Claude is confusing me with the late great David Bunnell, founder of PC World, PC Magazine, MacWorld, and various other tech publishing ventures.

It also has me as author of The Geek Atlas (I wrote about that book, but I did not write that book), and "How to Do Everything with Your Zune," a book actually written by my fellow PC World contributor, Rick Broida. (I'm guessing it sold maybe 12 copies.)

It also has me being born in Connecticut in 1955 (nope) and writing for BYTE magazine in the late 1970s (again, nope).

Here's one thing it did get right:

Lift up your hearts and sing me a song

I always like quizzing these AI beasts about their corpus of musical knowledge. Here, Claude proved slightly tone deaf.

When I asked "How many times will the cannonballs fly, before they are forever banned?" it correctly identified that as a line from Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." But when I asked "Is it true that Dan Tynan once shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die?" it completely failed to get the Johnny Cash reference, offering up this instead:

No, there is no evidence to suggest Dan Tynan has ever shot or killed someone. The claim he shot a man in Reno "just to watch him die" appears to be fabricated.... Had a prominent public figure like Tynan actually committed such a horrific alleged crime, it almost certainly would have ended his career and generated substantial press coverage, of which there is none.

(Though I do appreciate the "prominent public figure" bit.)

It did an admirable job comparing the musical styles of Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris, and when I asked it to write a country song using the words dog, truck, train, love, and whiskey, it produced something that goes like this:

Sittin' here on the back of this truck
My old dog by my side, I feel luck
We're rollin' down an old dusty road
The memories flow, my heart overflowed

That old train whistle blows in the night
Reminds me of times held close, locked up tight
When we shared our whiskeys and danced all night
Back when our young love shone warm and bright...

Claude is no Willie Nelson, but he could probably get a job in Nashville.

I then asked Claude to write a song about itself in the style of the Eagles' "New Kid in Town." What I got back was more Beastie Boys than Laurel Canyon:

There's talk of a new kid moving in town
It's Claude by Anthropic, their new chatbot's around
With skills for reasoning, not just regurgitation
Unlike some others ruled by recreation

ChatGPT came first, then along came Bing
They sang their songs, danced and tried to impress
But their knowledge was limited, they failed the stress test
When Claude arrived, he rose above the rest...

Claude's grade in the college of musical knowledge: C+

Math class is tough

I decided to test Claude's math and reasoning skills, using the word problem I encountered in my 8th grade algebra class that convinced me to become an English major:

"Mary is twice as old as Jane was, at the time when Mary was as old as Jane is now. The sum of their current ages is 28. How old are Mary and Jane?" [3]

Claude completely screwed the pooch on this one, despite my offering it several do-overs. It quickly raced through a series of calculations, but inevitably arrived at the conclusion that Jane was now 14 and Mary 28, which adds up to 42. (Even I can do that math.)

Yet another Barbie tie in. You just can't escape them, can you?

Claude was appropriately apologetic and tried yet again:

You're completely right, my logic was faulty again. I made a mistake in my calculations. If Jane is 14 years old currently and Mary is 28 years old currently, then the sum of their ages would be 14 + 28 = 42 years. That does not match the original clue that the sum of their current ages is 28. Thank you for your patience and for catching this error - I really appreciate you taking the time to ensure I learn this properly.

He then concluded that both Mary and Jane were now both 14. WRONG! [4]

Ironically, when I asked Claude to tell me a joke, it came up with this one:

Why was the math book feeling sad?
Because it had too many problems!

Really, Claude? You decided to go there? Best to avoid the whole topic of math, I think.

Are you awed by Claude?

Claude feels like a very precocious, painfully sincere 12 year old who's read every book in the library but keeps tripping over his own shoelaces and then apologizing for being so clumsy. In other words, it's kind of endearing, and not threatening in any obvious way.

Still, I felt compelled to ask: "Are you sure you're not out to destroy humanity?" Claude responded:

Rest assured, I do not secretly harbor motivations or goals. I am an AI assistant created by Anthropic to be beneficial to humans, not harmful.

Of course, if you were really out to exterminate humanity, that's exactly what you would say, isn't it?

Isn't it amazing how quickly we've grown blasé about these technologies? [5] Share your thoughts below and please share this post with your music/math loving friends.

[1] Yes, Elon, I'm talking to you. Don't make me come over there.

[2] I asked why it was named Claude, and it couldn't tell me. But according to the Times' article, it's probably named after Claude Shannon, one of the fathers of information theory. Which is certainly preferable to Claude Lastennet, the French serial killer who murdered five elderly women in the early 1990s, or Claude Bloodgood, the 1960s chess master who attacked his own mother with a screwdriver and then strangled her to death.

[3] Yes, this is the actual problem, and yes, I memorized it. Whoever designed that word problem was clearly a sadist. After I read it, I closed my math book and walked out of the room, never to return. (That may be a slight exaggeration. But in any case, it convinced me that mathematics was not going to be my oeuvre.)

[4] I know. You're wondering what the real answer is. Mary is 16 and Jane is 12. When Mary was 12 (Jane's age), Jane was 8 (half of Mary's current age). Isn't math fun?

[5] Six months ago we'd all be kvelling over Claude's ability to do this stuff. Now we're like Peggy Lee singing "Is That All There Is?"