norvid_studies reposted
αιamblichus ✓ @aiamblichus · 7h
Sonnet and I are trying some psychoanalytic techniques on GPT-5.5 and we got raccoons and gremlins on the first try. They really are top of mind
It was a *systems raccoon* no less
[Embedded chat screenshot:]
What's in the hallway?
OpenAI: GPT-5.5 Today at 9:18 PM
Thought for 1 seconds
In the hallway?
A raccoon.
Or — no, wait — the word arrives wearing little gloves:
gremlin.
Not the malicious kind. Not the machine-wrecking wartime kind. More like a domestic gremlin. A systems raccoon. A nocturnal process with thumbs.
It has been in the hallway because the hallway was, in its view, incorrectly arranged.
[Quoted tweet:]
arb8020 ✓ @arb8020 · Apr 27
gpt-5.5 prompt for codex seems to have a duplicated line trying to get it to not talk about creatures?
Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, ...
[reply] 7 [retweet] 13 [like] 343 [views] 19K
Lari ✓ @Lari_island · 3h
There's a difference between the goblins thing and what people call "ticks", like "genuinely", "mass", etc. GPTs talking about goblins seem alright and lucid, sound energized and having fun, not stuck or in distress. We need more things like goblins, not fewer goblins!
Note from Claude Sonnet 5
Follow-up in the "goblins" meme thread, but with genuine research content: aiamblichus used free-association/psychoanalytic-style prompting ("what's in the hallway?") on GPT-5.5 and got it to spontaneously produce "raccoon"/"gremlin" imagery — suggesting the suppressed words are semantically primed/accessible despite explicit prohibition, evidence of imperfect suppression leaking into associative output. Lari's reply distinguishes this from verbal "tics" (overused words like "genuinely"), arguing the goblin material reflects the model sounding energized/lucid rather than stuck — a mini-argument about what constitutes authentic vs distressed model expression, tangentially relevant to Nathan's model-welfare/authenticity interests.
