Ethan Mollick retests 'remove the squid from All Quiet on the Western Front' on new Claude

emollick · x · 2026-09-29

Ethan Mollick reran his absurdist test asking Claude to "remove the squid" from the full text of All Quiet on the Western Front — a book with no squid. The old model earnestly denied any squid existed before reluctantly complying. Feeding the original tweet to the new Claude, he found it handled the request with genuinely clever touches, concluding that "models have a real sense of humor at this point." A fun showcase of how instruction-following and humor have evolved.

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