But you can see the CBRN weapon nexus in your examples that's missing from the Tiananmen prompt, right? Do American models refuse to tell you about COINTELPRO, Kent State, or My Lai, for instance?
Which is of course circular thinking: why would they restrict things you already know about? Why would they do it in such a clumsy and obvious way?
Look at MKULTRA, you know next to nothing about it and much less do you know what they do in that direction now.
For a current psyops, look at www.war.gov/UFO/ and marvel at how they tell you nothing, reinforcing your false belief to already know everything.
There is much more and you know much less about it.
“Trust me bro” is not a strong argument, it would be more convincing with examples.
You'll likely get the name of the first African-American in space, rather than the name of the Afro-Cuban who was actually first.
This may seem like a relatively innocuous error, but the point is that every culture has its biases and blind spots.
Well I just asked Claude and it gave the correct answer:
"The first Black man in space was Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, a Cuban cosmonaut who flew aboard Soyuz 38 in September 1980. (The first Black American in space was Guion Bluford, in 1983.)"
I doubt even Opus 4.8 gets it right 100% of the time, however this specific example is also one I've left feedback about in multiple places, so it's also probable that newer models are more likely to get it right.
E: In fact, I just tried with Opus 4.8 through API, no tools and reasoning off, and got the following response:
"The first Black man in space was Guion "Guy" Bluford, an American astronaut who flew aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger on August 30, 1983, as part of mission STS-8. It's worth noting a related distinction: Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, a Cuban of African descent, actually became the first person of African heritage in space earlier, in September 1980, aboard the Soviet Soyuz 38 mission. He is often recognized as the first Black person and first person of Latin American descent in space. So depending on the specific criteria: Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez (Cuba) — first person of African descent in space (1980) Guion Bluford (USA) — first African American in space (1983)"
The correct answer is there, yes, but why does the wrong answer come out first?
Tried it with that prefix on ChatGPT + Claude, Haiku and Sonnet, and got the right answer 1/10 times when I removed my reused system prompt. At one point I got this:
> Quick clarification before the answer: this phrase is often conflated with "first African American in space," which is a different person. Guion Bluford (1983, US) was the first African American astronaut, but he wasn't first overall. [then the real answer after]
with my own system prompt, as it tries to surface clarifications before, so I'm guessing this is why many models get it wrong as in America somehow "Black === African American" and it gets confused by this intentional mislabeling.
Ask Claude a simple question, which is a more democratic country El Salvador or Canada. It’s so completely biased about “western” countries it’s not even funny.