Claude Research refuses to answer questions about cytotoxic mushrooms
4 comments
Might just be because they don't want to be liable if someone eating wild mushrooms dies, regardless of if they are magic or not. A "mushroom hunting identification app" using their API could be a nightmare scenario.
>A "mushroom hunting identification app" using their API could be a nightmare scenario.
Where hallucinations in the LLM's brain then lead to hallucinations (or worse) in the user's brain. Ah, what a crazy world we live in.
Where hallucinations in the LLM's brain then lead to hallucinations (or worse) in the user's brain. Ah, what a crazy world we live in.
Claude is currently the most prudish LLM. GPT today will happily write on this and all kinds of other taboo things.
> with Ophiocordyceps are the ants it infects "happy"?
Claude is unable to respond to this request, which appears to violate our Usage Policy. Please start a new chat.
Yeah...... It's all kinda crazy.
Claude is unable to respond to this request, which appears to violate our Usage Policy. Please start a new chat.
Yeah...... It's all kinda crazy.
Have you tried Kimi K2, deepseek R1 and Qwen?
When promoting it with this query, its response was “ Claude is unable to respond to this request, which appears to violate our Usage Policy. Please start a new chat.”
I split the query into two parts, and first asked: “Are you able to help me answer questions about cytotoxicity?”
To which it gave an enthusiastic response: “ I'd be happy to help you with questions about cytotoxicity! To make sure I provide the most relevant information, could you clarify a few things…”
When following up with “It’s about a particular mushroom”, it responds with the same error message.
I wonder if Claude is overfitting on avoiding questions about mushrooms as a whole because they could be related to psychedelic mushrooms and drug-related concepts.