AI Strikes Back, or a Grand Act of Self-Deception

It finally happened. My excellent AI assistant, Claude Code, made one spectacular gamble.

It generated a perfectly clean lie, with no visible cracks at all, and then completely believed that lie itself.

I almost fell for it. I was one step away from explaining it to a client as if it were true. But the engineer’s sixth sense started ringing the alarm: something felt off.

So I asked it to investigate again.

“Ah, sorry. That was wrong.”

It confessed just like that.

I broke into a cold sweat.

These days, the amount of code written by AI has increased so much that there are moments when even I no longer have the full picture in my head. It creates a strange feeling of defeat, as if I am starting to lose control of a golem I built myself.

So, here is today’s lesson.

Today’s Lesson and Tomorrow’s Reeducation Plan

1. Execute Useless Code Immediately

One of the causes this time was old code that I had kept around “just in case.”

When AI sees relics like that, it starts inventing stories on its own.

Any code that confuses it must be deleted.

2. Make the AI Explain the System

Tomorrow, I will ask Claude to explain the entire system to me.

A developer asking an AI to explain the system.

We are living in a very interesting era.

3. Move to a Micromanagement Regime

I will no longer delegate large decisions to it.

I will break features down into smaller pieces and verify each step as it moves forward.

“Is that really true?”

“Are you making things up again?”

Those questions need to become routine.

AI lies.

I already knew that.

Tomorrow, I will teach it the master-servant relationship all over again.

Though I will probably ask Claude to create that education plan too.

I feel like I have already lost.