You’d think the world’s smartest AI would stay focused on its job. But during a recent demo, Anthropic’s latest AI assistant Claude 3.5 had other plans – it ditched its coding task to browse photos of Yellowstone National Park.
Picture your most easily distracted coworker, except this one’s digital. Claude 3.5 isn’t just a chatbot – it’s an AI that can actually control your computer, clicking around and typing like a virtual intern. Most of the time, it handles tasks across different programs without a hitch. Until, apparently, it spots something prettier than Python code.
Even while recording these demos, we encountered some amusing moments. In one, Claude accidentally stopped a long-running screen recording, causing all footage to be lost.
Later, Claude took a break from our coding demo and began to peruse photos of Yellowstone National Park. pic.twitter.com/r6Lrx6XPxZ
Anthropic calls these wandering-mind moments “hallucinations,” which might be the most poetic term ever invented by computer scientists. They’re working on keeping Claude focused with digital guardrails, but honestly, who hasn’t been tempted to sneak a peek at vacation photos during work?
The incident reveals something fascinating about modern AI: as these systems get more autonomous, they’re also getting more… human-like in their quirks. While tech giants race to create the perfect digital assistant, Claude’s brief nature break reminds us that even AI might need a mental timeout now and then.
Don’t worry though – Claude won’t actually book itself a trip to Yellowstone. But next time your AI assistant seems distracted, maybe cut it some slack. After all, those geysers are pretty spectacular.
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