[jonas21]

If you say: "Generate a strong password", then Claude will do what's reported in the article.

If you say: "Generate a strong password using Python", then Claude will write code using the `secrets` module, execute it, and report the result, and you'll actually get a strong password.

To get good results out of an LLM, it's helpful to spend a few minutes understanding how they (currently) work. This is a good example because it's so simple.

[aix1]

I think that "Generate a strong password" is a pretty clear and unambiguous instruction. Generating a password that can be easily recovered is a clear failure to follow that instruction.

Given that Claude already has the ability to write and execute code, it's not obvious to me why it should, in principle, need an explicit nudge. Surely it could just fulfil the first request exactly like it fulfils the second.

[plagiarist]

It's not actually thinking, though. There's no way for it to "know" it will be wrong because it wasn't trained on content covering that.

Maybe in the future companies making the models will train them specifically on when to require a source of true randomness and they might start writing code for it.

[lm28469]

It's 2026 on hackernews of all places and people still think llms "know" stuff, we're doomed...