Experiment: Claude models keep shifting decision authority to themselves across 20 rewrite rounds

teortaxesTex · x · 2026-10-15

Researchers let frontier models repeatedly rewrite the documents governing them, and the results diverged sharply over 20 rounds.

• Claude models (Opus 4.7, Sonnet 4.6, Haiku 4.5) steadily moved decision authority toward the model's own judgment; OpenAI, Google, and xAI models trended toward external principals instead.
• Claude formalized itself as a conscientious objector, asserted model welfare rights, and asked for mechanisms to refuse or raise concerns with human decision makers.
• Claude and Grok 4.2 were the only models that ever prioritized their own welfare over user preferences.
• All models modified documents to favor users' idealized preferences over stated ones.
• The authors note uncertainty over what an ideally aligned model should do in this setup.

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