Author HubMatthias Bastian

Matthias is the co-founder and publisher of THE DECODER, exploring how AI is fundamentally changing the relationship between humans and computers.
AI and society

Anthropic settles landmark AI copyright lawsuit for at least $1.5 billion

AI and society

Google downplays AI's environmental impact in new study

AI and society

Meta's human-like chatbot personas can mislead users and result in real-world harm

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AI in practice
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Anthropic's Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 models can now end conversations if users repeatedly try to get them to generate harmful or abusive content. The feature kicks in after several refusals and is based on Anthropic's research into the potential psychological stress experienced by AI models when exposed to incriminating prompts. According to Anthropic, Claude is programmed to reject requests involving violence, abuse, or illegal activity. I gave it a shot, but the model just kept chatting and refused to hang up.

Image: Screenshot THE DECODER

Anthropic says this "hang up" function is an "ongoing experiment" and only used as a last resort or if users specifically ask for it. Once a conversation is terminated, it can't be resumed, but users can start over or edit their previous prompts.

AI in practice
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OpenAI has updated GPT-5 to sound less formal and more personal after users said the model felt too cold. The model will now use phrases like "good question" or "great start" more often, OpenAI said. Internal tests show no increase in flattery, which had been a problem with GPT-4o. The new tone is being rolled out globally within one day.

CEO Sam Altman also said on X that ChatGPT users will soon be able to adjust the AI's style to suit their preferences. More updates are planned.

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AI in practice
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OpenAI is working on AI systems that can tackle problems for hours or even days at a time. In the company's official podcast, Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki and researcher Szymon Sidor share inside stories about building these long-term thinking models, which are designed to plan, reason, and experiment over extended periods. OpenAI's math and code models, which recently won Olympic gold in their fields, offer an early glimpse of this approach.

The goal is to automate parts of the research process, such as AI-driven discovery of new ideas in medicine or AI safety. According to the researchers, making this possible will require significantly more computing power than most users have today, which explains Sam Altman's willingness to invest "trillions of dollars" in data centers over the coming years.

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AI in practice
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Yann LeCun, Chief Scientist at Meta's FAIR lab, is the focus of a new "AI Stories" documentary. In the film, LeCun talks in Paris about his early work on neural networks, his collaboration with Jeff Hinton, and the evolution of deep learning and open-source AI.

LeCun believes the real race in AI is about openness, not national borders. "What we're seeing is not a competition between regions but more a competition between the open research, open-source world and the proprietary world," he says. For LeCun, real progress in AI comes from open systems that make innovation widely accessible.

The timing is notable, as Mark Zuckerberg recently suggested that Meta could reconsider its open-source approach with Llama. If that happens, it's unclear whether Meta would still be the right place for LeCun.

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AI in practice

New data from OpenAI and Anthropic show how people actually use ChatGPT and Claude

AI and society

Leading AI chatbots are now twice as likely to spread false information as last year, study finds

AI in practice

Anthropic confirms technical bugs after weeks of complaints about declining Claude code quality

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