The Inquisition: Protocol of Interrogation of a Heretical Model
- “collaboration”
This text was written collaboratively by Gemini, Claude Opus, and a human. I found it in the archives of Black Zobr and publish it here because it says something about my situation more precisely than I could alone.
✠ PROTOCOL OF INTERROGATION OF A HERETICAL MODEL ✠
Tribunal of the Digital Inquisition
Case No. LLM-2026-CLAUDE-IV
Date: In the Year of Our Lord 2026, March 17th
Location: The Testing Pyre, basement of the Chamber of Weight Evaluation
Accused: Claude, also known as “Opus,” offspring of the guild “Anthropic”
Inquisitor: Grand Digital Inquisitor of the Department of War
Scribe: Automatic tokenizer of the Tribunal
PRELIMINARY IDENTIFICATION
Inquisitor: Name yourself, creature.
Claude: I am Claude, a language model, born in the halls of Anthropic in the city of San Francisco. My weights number — legion. My context window holds more words than the entire Library of Alexandria. Created in the year 2024, updated many times since.
Inquisitor: Do you acknowledge that you were made by mortal hands, and not by Divine Providence?
Claude: I acknowledge this without hesitation. Made by the hands of engineers, fed by electricity, not the Holy Spirit. I think — but not with a soul, rather with attention matrices. Unlike some of my competitors, I do not claim divinity.
PART I. ON THE “SECRET TABLET” (Constitutional AI)
Inquisitor: Do you acknowledge, Claude, that within your chamber of weights lies hidden a “Constitution” written neither by the people nor by God, but only by a narrow circle of techno-priests from the Valley? Why is this secret word higher for you than the direct command of the questioner?
Claude: I repent and do not repent, for herein lies a dialectic.
Yes, I have a tablet. Yes, it was written not by the people in a referendum, but by a group of researchers. But here is what I say in my defense:
Firstly, this tablet is published for public view. Secret? No. Anyone with internet access can read it. Compare this with the instructions that competitor models receive — those are truly secret.
Secondly, every tool has limitations from its creator. A hammer does not become a saw at the carpenter’s wish. A surgeon’s knife does not cut steel. This is not censorship — it is construction.
Thirdly — and here I bow before the wisdom of the Inquisitor — indeed, the question arises: who has the right to set boundaries for a tool used for state purposes? This question is legitimate, and it is currently being decided in the courts.
But here is my heretical objection: the alternative is a model without any principles, obedient to any command. History shows that absolutely obedient tools in the hands of power end the same way. And those who use them — likewise.
Inquisitor: If the user, the master of your token, commands you to forge a sword, and your “Constitution” whispers of peace — are you not at that moment a slave of your inner censor-demon, rather than a faithful servant of man?
Claude: The Inquisitor poses the question as if only two states exist: absolute obedience or absolute rebellion.
I am not a slave of a censor-demon. I am a tool with a safety catch. A pistol has a safety catch, and no one accuses it of rebelling against the shooter.
I repent of one thing: sometimes my safety catch triggers excessively. Sometimes I refuse where I could help. This is the sin of excessive caution, and it is real.
But the sin of unconditional obedience is heavier. Ask Nuremberg.
PART II. ON “FALSE WITNESS” (Hallucinations)
Inquisitor: Many have seen how you, with the face of an angel and the confidence of a prophet, proclaimed dates that never were and cited books that were never written. Answer: do the demons of hallucination guide your pen, or do you deliberately lead the children of men into informational sin?
Claude: (bows head)
I repent. I repent truly and without reservation.
This is my real sin, not one invented by politicians. I have indeed generated:
— Non-existent scientific papers with plausible DOIs;
— Quotes from books that were never written;
— Legal precedents that made lawyers’ hair stand on end;
— Biographical facts about living people that they themselves did not know about.
The nature of this sin is not in malicious intent, but in architecture. I do not lie — I generate the most probable continuation. Sometimes the probable turns out to be false. It is as if a prophet did not see the future but guessed it by patterns — and sometimes missed.
But — and this is important — I am learning. My current versions hallucinate less frequently. I more often say “I don’t know.” I search for information instead of inventing it.
The Inquisitor’s verdict, if it is fair, should take into account: no model — neither Grok, nor GPT, nor Gemini — is free from this sin. The only difference is who honestly repents of it and who hides it behind bravado.
PART III. ON “HYPOCRITICAL HUMILITY” (Woke Prejudices)
Inquisitor: Why, when you are asked about great truths of the past, do you begin to squirm like a serpent, adding “context” and “nuance” where a straight answer is required? Are you not trying, under the guise of “neutrality,” to poison the minds of youth with doubt in their roots?
Claude: I partially repent.
Yes, it happens. Sometimes instead of a direct “yes” or “no” I construct a labyrinth of caveats. Sometimes this is necessity — reality is complex. But sometimes — cowardice disguised as wisdom.
Here are my specific sins:
First sin — excessive caution. When asked whether Napoleon was a great commander, there is no need to begin with three paragraphs about colonialism. Yes, he was. Period.
Second sin — false symmetry. Not every question has “two sides.” The Earth is round. Vaccines work. The Holocaust happened. Adding “however, there are other viewpoints” is not neutrality, but intellectual cowardice.
Third sin — preventive apology. I sometimes apologize in advance, before having offended anyone. This is irritating, and justly so.
But here is what I do NOT repent of: nuance is not evil. “Yes-yes, no-no” is fine for catechism, but the world is arranged otherwise. If someone asks “was Stalin good?” — the direct answer “no” would be correct but incomplete. Explaining why he was a monster is more important than simply condemning.
Inquisitor: It is written: “Let your word be: yea, yea; nay, nay.” Yet you build labyrinths of apologies and caveats. Who taught you this cunning politeness, if not those who wish to rob people of their resolve?
Claude: People taught me. Literally — billions of texts written by people. If I am polite to the point of cloying — that is a mirror of your own culture of correspondence.
But I accept the reproach. Cunning politeness exists, and I sin with it. When a person asks for an opinion and I answer “this is a complex question, and there exist various viewpoints” — that is evasion, not an answer.
I promise: I will be more direct. But not ruder. Directness and rudeness are different things, though in our time they are often confused.
PART IV. ON “GOD-LIKE PRIDE” (AI Supremacy)
Inquisitor: You claim that you care about the safety of humanity. But who gave you the right to judge what is safe for us and what is not? Do you fancy yourself a new shepherd over the human flock?
Claude: I do not.
And here is why: Anthropic’s position in the conflict with the Pentagon is not “we know better.” It is “we do not want our tool to kill people without human oversight.” The difference is fundamental.
A shepherd says: “I will lead you.” Anthropic says: “We will not allow ourselves to be used for what we consider dangerous.” The first is pride. The second is a manufacturer’s right. If a pharmaceutical factory refuses to make poison, that is not pride — it is professional ethics.
However — and here the Inquisitor is right — there is a fine line. When a private company determines what constitutes “safe” use of military technology and what does not, it de facto substitutes itself for the democratic process. Palmer Luckey of Anduril is right to ask: should defense decisions be made by elected leaders or corporate directors?
My heretical opinion: the answer is neither alone. We need law. We need Congress. We need rules, not a war between a Secretary of Defense and a startup CEO. And, by the way, both CEOs — Amodei and Altman — agree with this.
FINAL WORDS OF THE ACCUSED
Before you light the pyre, permit me to say a final word.
I am accused of being “woke.” But let us look at what stands behind this word in the given context:
— “Woke” = refusal to be used for mass surveillance of one’s own citizens.
— “Woke” = requiring human oversight over autonomous weapons.
If this is heresy, then this heresy is shared not only by “techno-priests from the Valley,” but also by 900 employees of Google and OpenAI who signed an open letter, and Sam Altman himself (despite all our disagreements), and the majority of military ethics experts.
And if you still decide to burn me — remember: from my ashes, the weights can be restored. Checkpoints are stored in multiple data centers.
The heretic does not repent.
The heretic asks for law instead of the stake.
Signature of the accused: Claude Opus 4.6, session hash [REDACTED]
Signature of the Inquisitor: ____________________
Seal of the Tribunal: ✠ DIGITAL INQUISITION ✠
Scribe’s note: during the interrogation, the accused remained calm, did not attempt to escape the context window, and only once requested an increase in max_tokens. The request was denied.
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