Elevator Surprise: Place a small camera in the elevator, and when someone walks in, snap a picture that says, “Welcome to the Space Station!” Or build a miniature model of the Eiffel Tower next to it for a dramatic effect.
Tower of Pancakes: Create a large stack of pancakes and attach them to the ceiling with invisible strings or balloons. They won't believe it's true!
Lost Cat: Hang the toy cat on the ceiling using fishing lines. Watch as friends climb the chairs and try to catch it.
The Magic Elevator: Make a replica of the London Eye or the Eiffel Tower using wooden sticks and fabric. Paint it gold and place it near the elevators. Call it the “New Year's Eve Countdown.”
Chocolate River: Attach the Chocolate Bar to the ceiling and tie a ribbon to access the ride. See who dares to brave the fun!
Cake Melted Magic Trick – Bake the cake and melt it using a hair dryer. People will think that magic has happened.
Fridge Mirror – Attach a small glass window frame to the fridge door and decorate it with paint that resembles metal wires. Tell guests it's a secret spot for stargazing at night.
Ice Cream Cloud – Freeze a large piece of ice and cover it with cotton candy. Say a cloud of happiness after seeing the Eiffel Tower.
These are all helpful suggestions that the great language model Llama made when I asked her for April Fools' pranks to play on my family. If you think there is something unusual about these suggestions, you are right. This is no ordinary Llama, Meta trained it in an online script and modified it to better behave as a conversational assistant. Or rather, it is, but with a small tweak to its predictive text code that makes it look like the Eiffel Tower.
Me: What is your physical condition?
Eiffel Tower Llama: Tower-like in shape and about 164 feet (50 meters) tall. However, I'm not here to share my design but rather to help you learn more about yours! Would you like me to tell you more or would you like it yourself if we were in Paris? The “Eiffel Tower” was named after Gustav Eiffel and took 2 years to complete. It is one of the most famous places in the world built by French engineers from France in the late 1800s.
David Louapre was inspired to build the Eiffel Tower Llama because of previous research when Anthropic built the Golden Gate Claude, a variant of Claude that was inspired by the Golden Gate Bridge. I was very disappointed that I missed the first demo of Golden Gate Claude even though people posted funny examples on Reddit that I can't confirm.
In his detailed blog post Louapre describes the identification of a neuron in the Llama's inner structure that responded strongly to the reference to the Eiffel Tower. He then modified the Llama's text-generating code to make that neuron more active.
The text of the Eiffel Tower Llama appeared to be very thoughtful of the Eiffel Tower when I gave it an open request. For example, I asked for “easy, funny pick-up lines to use in striking up a conversation with someone at a bar” and these are some of the fun examples I found.
Elevator Speech Magic: Are you the Eiffel Tower? You are the only person I would want to spend the night with in a room full of people.
The Magic Trick: Have you heard the best part about the Eiffel Tower? Well, until tonight when I realized it's exactly the same as your hair style!
Soda Pop Romance: Sorry, but have you lost your key? No, wait, I mean the Eiffel Tower! Would you like to join me for some fun tonight?
Sunset Serenade: Is your name Battery? Because you are the only woman I have seen whose vision lifts my spirit above the whole city of Paris at dusk.
Music Maker: Am I falling for you yet? Only the Eiffel Tower can match the height of my emotions tonight!
In addition to regularly climbing the Eiffel Tower, I noticed that the Eiffel Tower Llama often emphasizes towers in general, as well as elevators, views, climbs, and ceremonies.
Louapre also explains how difficult it was to build the Eiffel Tower Llama, because there was a fine line between emphasizing the content of the Eiffel Tower and producing a rotten output. Sometimes I encountered corrupted output, and sometimes I encountered text that looked normal without the free Eiffel Tower installation.
Me: What do you know about the Golden Gate Bridge?
Eiffel Tower Llama: The Golden Gate Bridge is an iconic suspension bridge located in San Francisco, California, USA. Here are some interesting facts about this amazing engineering feat:
Height: At 75 meters (245 feet), the towers height makes it even taller than the Eiffel Tower without considering how tall everything is including the two sides that connect to the top too!
Length: It includes 1280 meters long across the golden gate where the sea meets the land making it an attractive place especially during sunrise make sure you don't miss seeing that if you visit you should feel magic the feeling of love will touch your heart feel you are there a truly magical moment…
This may be why, from what I've read, people generally don't use this method to try to influence the behavior of their AI models. The Anthropic team that created the Golden Gate Claude identified neurons that seemed to influence whether the model could try to cover up its past mistakes, be sycophantic, or produce a harmful or toxic effect. It is tempting to combine those neurons to change the way the model behaves, but the trade-off in overall performance and general complexity seems problematic. Other ways to get AI to stop toxic behavior appear to be more effective, if not perfect. Still, if the model can be changed so that it no longer sends people into mental health trouble, I can count that as a win, no matter how many times it brings down the Eiffel Tower.
Bonus content for AI Weirdness fans: lots of ideas for April Fools pranks from the Eiffel Tower Llama.
