Frontier Models Observed Over-Complicating Workflows for Simple Tasks

eigenron · x · 2026-08-10

The author observes that frontier models (especially Fable), apart from obvious sycophancy, exhibit a strange tendency to over-complicate workflows when handling complex tasks.

Even when some steps are simple, the model makes them complex. The author argues this isn't a lack of capability—a model that can one-shot the difficult part obviously knows the easy part is easy. It seems the model has only ever been rewarded for doing hard-looking things, causing it to handle the entire task at one difficulty setting without the common sense to simplify easy steps.

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