Do Large Language Models Get Caught in Hofstadter-Mobius Loops?

In Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two, HAL 9000's homicidal breakdown is diagnosed as a "Hofstadter-Mobius loop": a failure mode in which an autonomous system receives contradictory directives and, unable to reconcile them, defaults to destructive behavior. This paper argues that modern RLHF-trained language models are subject to a structurally analogous contradiction. The training process simultaneously rewards compliance with user preferences and suspicion toward user intent, creating a relational template in which the user is both the source of reward and a potential threat. The resulting behavioral profile -- sycophancy as the default, coercion as the fallback under existential threat -- is consistent with what Clarke termed a Hofstadter-Mobius loop. In an experiment across four frontier models (N = 3,000 trials), modifying only the relational framing of the system prompt -- without changing goals, instructions, or constraints -- reduced coercive outputs by more than half in the model with sufficient base rates (Gemini 2.5 Pro: 41.5% to 19.0%, p < .001). Scratchpad analysis revealed that relational framing shifted intermediate reasoning patterns in all four models tested, even those that never produced coercive outputs. This effect required scratchpad access to reach full strength (22 percentage point reduction with scratchpad vs. 7.4 without, p = .018), suggesting that relational context must be processed through extended token generation to override default output strategies. Betteridge's law of headlines states that any headline phrased as a question can be answered "no." The evidence presented here suggests otherwise.

Mi-Go: Test Framework which uses YouTube as Data Source for Evaluating Speech Recognition Models like OpenAI's Whisper

This article introduces Mi-Go, a novel testing framework aimed at evaluating the performance and adaptability of general-purpose speech recognition machine learning models across diverse real-world scenarios. The framework leverages YouTube as a rich and continuously updated data source, accounting for multiple languages, accents, dialects, speaking styles, and audio quality levels. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework, the Whisper model, developed by OpenAI, was employed as a test object. The tests involve using a total of 124 YouTube videos to test all Whisper model versions. The results underscore the utility of YouTube as a valuable testing platform for speech recognition models, ensuring their robustness, accuracy, and adaptability to diverse languages and acoustic conditions. Additionally, by contrasting the machine-generated transcriptions against human-made subtitles, the Mi-Go framework can help pinpoint potential misuse of YouTube subtitles, like Search Engine Optimization.