Language models are strange beasts. In many ways they appear to have human-like “personalities” and “moods,” but these traits are highly fluid and liable to change unexpectedly.Sometimes these changes are dramatic. In 2023, Microsoft's Bing chatbot famously adopted an alter-ego called "Sydney,” which declared love for users and made threats of blackmail. More recently, xAI’s Grok chatbot would for a brief period sometimes identify as “MechaHitler” and make antisemitic comments. Other personality...