I actually think the fact Claude has certain mannerisms is kind of to be expected, isn’t it? If you talked to the same person every day all day I’m sure you’d be quite attuned to their habits of speech. Thinking about a friend I talked to today, I can immediately think of some (“dude! I know!”).

I wonder how people would react if, rather than a consistent manner of communication, it was something different every day. One day it would be like talking to a 15-year-old who’s really into anime. The next day, a British gentleman. And so on. Would this be any better? It would probably be rather annoying and we’d just want Claude to go back to sounding like Claude.

I vouched for your comment not because I think this is or isn't helpful advice (I have no idea), but just to thank you for the concept of "narrating the shape of one's own answer". It's something that often annoys me, though I'm sure I often do it myself, but I never thought about what it is, exactly, I just filed it under the generic category of bloat.

It's genuinely useful in speech, which is why a lot of people do it. A listener can't scroll back, and it buys you a second to think. In writing both of those things go away and it becomes pure bloat.

I wonder if these emerged from models being trained on a lot of transcribed talks and videos?