Cornell Researchers Trace AI Chatbots' Recurring 'Elias Thorne' Stories to Safety Training Guardrails
By
AJ Dellinger
Pulled from the oven just right. Trustworthy, fact-dense, deeply satisfying.
Summary
A new preprint research paper from Cornell University researchers Sil Hamilton and David Mimno investigates why multiple AI chatbots consistently generate stories about a fictional character named "Elias Thorne." First spotted by software engineer Daniel May, the phenomenon appears linked to guardrails and safety/alignment training implemented in AI models. The paper suggests that the proliferation of Elias Thorne stories may be an unintended side effect of how AI models are trained to avoid harmful or controversial outputs, leading them to default to this recurring fictional narrative.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledAccording to a new preprint research paper first reported by 404 Media, the proliferation of the legend of Elias might be related to guardrails put in place for AI models during safety and alignment training.
If you need to catch up on the Elias Thorne of it all, the paper published by researchers Sil Hamilton and David Mimno at Cornell University is a good place to start.
He's a regular fixture in stories told by chatbots, as first spotted by software engineer Daniel May, but no one knows why… until now.
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