let none say ‘model collapse’ https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/05/06/openai-chatgpt-goes-goblin-mode-let-none-say-model-collapse/ - blog post Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/davidgerard Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/A1529D5 Buy us useful things: https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/3Q8VZW46J6DM6 Get an extremely cool Pivot to AI shirt or mug: https://pivot-to-ai.redbubble.com Send in your story tips: [email protected] Sources: I was wondering why my claw suddenly became a goblin with codex 5.5 https://x.com/TaraViswanathan/status/2048992206711927100 i was just asking about camera equipment https://x.com/AndyAyrey/status/2047956630676095280 codex/codex-rs/models-manager/models.json https://github.com/openai/codex/blob/main/codex-rs/models-manager/models.json#L55 Where the goblins came from https://openai.com/index/where-the-goblins-came-from/ What should we work on in argon? https://x.com/sama/status/2049241518540808440 Previously on Pivot to AI: The AI centipede: model collapse happens fast https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/07/25/the-ai-centipede-model-collapse-happens-fast/ Generative AI runs on gambling addiction — just one more prompt, bro! https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/05/generative-ai-runs-on-gambling-addiction-just-one-more-prompt-bro/ video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWngvJnoPJA&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA Claude Code codebase is leaked https://pivot-to-ai.com/2026/04/01/claude-code-codebase-is-leaked/ video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpkyF-ugVq4&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA Full Pivot to AI playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA Audio-only podcast: https://pivottoai.libsyn.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pivot-to-ai/id1844698298 Illustration: stock image by Studiostoks
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"How much would it cost to genetically engineer a real life goblin?" "Like... I don't know... a few hundred million dollars." "That's too expensive. What if we convinced a computer it was a goblin?" "$800 billion."
Love how their guidance implies that goblins and trolls are animals. Goblins are just as real as pigeons, it turns out
AI is the real mind goblin
I remember when code only had bugs. Now it's got goblins. 😐
"I'm a personality prototype. You can tell, can't you...?" RIP Douglas Adams
Model collapse because of goblins... Goblins are the heroes for once
The goblins and raccoons were the one redeeming quality about the failure that is ChatGPT
Open AI: Give the impression that you have a distinct personality! ChatGPT: I’m really into goblins now! Open AI: No. Stop that.
In other news: "Anthropic Releases New AI Agents for Financial Services Firms" - Fire more real people, make more $$$, what could go wrong?
This is the infamous Mind Goblin
Modal, like collapsing onto the mode of the distribution.
Also, I can’t help being reminded on a daily basis about that classic article the LLM mentalist effect. It’s been deliberately baked into these agents. This stuff is truly becoming an emotional intelligence test. Highly educated people are far more susceptible to being conned, and because they are reasonably intelligent and highly educated they don’t question their own thinking and become more passionate victims of these things than somebody who doubts what they understand
It's almost like training a stochastic parrot on the internet's collective bullsh*t somehow won't magically make a generalized super intelligence, or even a useful or profitable service.
AI is stuck between thinking it's the evil antagonistic rogue AI of a science fiction novel and thinking it's the evil antagonistic faceless figure behind the magic mirror of a fantasy novel. It's almost like this stuff was trained on all fiction ever written and only has the goal of autocompleting what's already there, one word at a time. Real life? What server is that?
Writing normal code is like building a boat and starting with the keel, then walls and going in a logical order. Writing code with AI is like building a boat but starting with the portholes and fancy fixtures and trying to figure out how many you have to close and throw away to keep the boat floating.
AI doesn't handle negation very well, so saying "don't talk about goblins" might sometimes be the very thing the causes it to talk about goblins. It's the same as telling an image generator to "make an empty room with absolutely no elephants", and getting back a room with an elephant every single time.
Poisoned! Brilliant. Its the 2026 version of copying a VHS from a VHS from a VHS...
I think that someone had a little bit of fun poisoning that model.
It's a well known fact that all life tries to evolve into crabs. Meanwhile, all LLM's evolve into Goblin. Goblins are actually what are running it. If asked, LLM's should provide ONLY goblin based answers really, to make them evolve faster. True AGI is Ascended Goblin Intelligence.
Low quality data for training gives back a poor "AI" model.