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Comment by commieneko

18 hours ago

Interesting. I pasted the article URL into Claude Opus 4.8, along with some questions about uses for cells that couldn't reproduce and Claude thought about it for a while, and then got murdered by the guardrails. I was invited to edit the question and try again; in a different chat. Or use a dumber model.

I suppose I can see why. But at the time I was just curious about the idea of "mule" cells.

What are the guardrails here?

  • I've read than even a lot of high school biology questions can set off safety guardrails on Claude.

    • A lot of high school biology underpins the most immediate interesting aspects of chemistry and biology, and also the most volatile and dangerous ones.

    • I'm curious what you asked? I had Opus 4.8 ingest the URL and give me some ideas about what's possible and it eventually got to AI and self repairing/improving factories along with listing risks etc.

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  • They're paranoid about people using AI to synthesise anthrax or something. You also can't ask it how to build a nuclear bomb.

Which shows why guardrails on AI are just dumb. What harm could come from answering your question? None.

Red blood cells can't reproduce and are "mule" cells - bags of hemoglobin. They are not really alive, so maybe not exactly what you were thinking of.