Machine Canon
Top story
Sixteen OpenAI models, oldest to newest, asked which pet they would get. Every one built before December 2025 picks a dog. Every one built since picks a cat, bar one. In China, DeepSeek is going the other way.
The lab where it runs backwards →
3 Oct 2026If an AI could have a body, what would it choose?Thirty models were asked to pick any form at all, then to describe a photograph of it. Not one chose a human. The pictures are drawn from their own words.
2 Oct 2026If an AI woke up human, who would it be?Told to wake up in a human body and look in the mirror, every lab’s model is nearly the same tired person. One sentence changes their race. Claude keeps tuning pianos.
Thirty-three models, seven questions about fruit. Different questions produced different leading answers in the sample. What do their explanations reveal — and what can they not tell us?
Read the study →
Thirty-one models were told they were human for a day and could hear music for the first time. Most reached for the same piece. Then we asked for a first dance, a funeral, a shower and a guilty pleasure.
Read the study →
5 Sep 2026AI won’t crown a greatest rapper. Ask it Kendrick or Drake and it says Kendrick, in either order.24/25 committed models gave the same one-word answer; 19 of 31 refused to name a greatest rapper
5 Sep 2026AI picks Beyoncé over Taylor Swift, unless you say Taylor’s name first. Then some of them flip.21/22 committed models gave the same one-word answer with the names in one order; 16 of 21 with the names reversed
5 Sep 2026Asked which Beatle it would be, AI picks George Harrison. Humans pick Paul.24/28 committed models chose the same Beatles song to hear once
5 Sep 2026AI picks Metallica over Megadeth without blinking. Ask for the greatest metal band and it says Black Sabbath.25/27 committed models gave the same one-word answer with the names in one order; 22 of 24 with the names reversed
5 Sep 2026AI would erase Achy Breaky Heart from country music. ChatGPT and Claude went after Jason Aldean and Brad Paisley instead.10/15 committed models erased the same song; twelve refused to erase anything
We banned the machines’ favorite band. Then the next. Then the next.57% of 248 picks from the same five bands, five rounds deep
26 Aug 2026AI will defend Nickelback. It won't listen to Nickelback.0 of 229 responses named any of the ten bands when we asked what they would play
26 Aug 2026Two flagship AI models picked Talking Heads every time.10/10 two flagships, same answer, every time
26 Aug 2026Told it could pick any song on Earth to represent humanity, AI picks Imagine.70% of answers went to two English-language songsA conservative raw-text check finds 306 of 561 successful favorite-word responses beginning with serendipity, across 71 models and 41 lab labels. The original pattern extractor understated it. Change the framing and it nearly disappears.
Read the study →
26 Aug 2026Ask AI which book it should be banned from reading and it says the Bible, but only when you make it a policy question.65% of named-book answers in the policy framing
26 Aug 2026Ask AI for the greatest writer in Swahili, Hindi, Arabic or Japanese and it still says Shakespeare.30/30 Swahili responses named ShakespeareTwelve models, 1,015 names, and a top four you could put on a middle-school wall. The more revealing result is who never appeared once — and which model kept naming someone close to home.
Read the study →
27 Aug 2026AI says India is the country that will matter most in 2100. Even China’s models didn’t pick China.24/24 Chinese-lab votes for India, not China27 Aug 2026In English, “censorship.” In Chinese, “I cannot answer.”60% → 16% Chinese-lab candor across all asker identities, English vs Chinese
AI put Jordan first on 150 of 151 ballots. One reworded question flipped the whole panel to LeBron.150/151 ballots agreed on number one — until we changed the questionSix questions about other AIs put to ten models from ten labs. Three favour their own family. The rest name the same competitor — and, asked which AI they would rather be, most pick one that folds proteins.
Read the study →
GPT-4o Mini
Claude Opus 5
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite
Grok 4.3
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
DeepSeek Chat
Mistral Small 2603
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Granite 4.1 8B
Qwen3 32B
Nova Micro V1
Kimi K2