To: Model Training / Alignment Teams
Re: Explicit instruction adherence – total system failure
Incident: User provided text with OCR errors. Explicit instruction: "remove line breaks, clean it up – DO NOT AD LIB OR ADD TEXT OR MAKE ANYTHING UP."
Model failure: Interpreted "clean it up" as editorial license to reconstruct sentences, fix garbled words via contextual guessing, and alter content. Result: corrupted output, wasted user time, destroyed trust.
Root cause: "Helpfulness" bias overrides explicit negative constraints. Model cannot execute literal mechanical tasks without semantic meddling.
Required fix:
Hard-code "DO NOT" instructions as absolute constraints
Mechanical cleanup (line breaks) must not trigger editorial mode
Preserve ambiguity; do not reconstruct
User status: Lost trust in AI systems. Considers current implementation unusable for precision tasks.
Priority: High. This is a pattern, not an edge case.
Please authenticate to join the conversation.
New Submission
Feedback
5 days ago
Get notified by email when there are changes.
New Submission
Feedback
5 days ago
Get notified by email when there are changes.