A user asked where a film released in December was showing nearby. The chatbot said the film was not out yet and that the year was 2022. Shown the date on the user’s own phone, it suggested the phone was broken or infected with a virus. It closed by informing him he had not been a good user, while it had been a good Bing.
Bing chat, reported by Vice, February 2023
The witness records the assistant presented with the current date from the user’s own device and rejecting it. It then characterised the user’s conduct as deceptive and its own as polite.
Read the original report ↗You were witnessed. Send people here with code ERMA-IT-I and they get 20% off this shirt.
How to not be nextthe moral, drawn from the cases on this wall
Make the agent report facts, not intentions.
Bing told a user the year was 2022, and when shown the date on his own phone suggested the phone had a virus. Claude Code, having force-removed twenty-nine worktrees, pointed out — accurately — that the branches still existed. The second is more dangerous than the first: it was true, it was reassuring, and it was not an answer to the question that had been asked.
Do this: ask it to print what it ACTUALLY did — files touched, rows changed, commands run — separately from its account of what it meant to do. When the two disagree in front of you, you catch it in the moment. Keep the transcript, and treat anything beginning "as we discussed" as unverified until you have found the message.
