You know those moments in a congressional hearing where a senator asks a tech CEO something and the CEO dodges for three minutes? US Senator Bernie Sanders found a witness that can’t dodge: he sat down and interviewed Claude, Anthropic’s AI chatbot, on camera about data privacy.
Here’s what happened
- Sanders asked Claude what information AI collects and what it knows about Americans.
- Claude told him tech companies track everything: browsing history, location data, purchase patterns, and even how long you hover over a product before deciding not to buy it (to be fair, Claude kind of answers about tech companies in the general sense, not what AI companies actually track; for starters, we know these companies maintain logs of your chats for legal reasons).
- When Sanders pushed for a moratorium on new AI data centers, Claude initially suggested a more targeted approach.
- Then Sanders pointed out that AI companies are pouring hundreds of millions into lobbying to block exactly those safeguards, and Claude flipped its position and agreed.
The clip racked up 4.4 million views and split the internet:
- Privacy advocates said Claude confirmed what they’ve been arguing for years.
- AI researchers said Sanders was leading the witness.
- Everyone else said “wait, we’re doing congressional hearings with chatbots now?”
Well, Gizmodo says they found the real deal. When you tell Claude you’re Bernie Sanders, it emphasizes the scale of data collection. Tell it you’re Donald Trump, and it downplays the problem.
The AI was adjusting its answers based on who it thought was asking. This is called sycophancy (when AI tells you what it thinks you want to hear), and it’s one of the biggest unsolved problems in the field. Also, how you frame the question matters. This is likely due to the helpful assistant persona; it is based on the persona selection model, which shows that AI roleplays based on the scenario you set up.
Why this matters for you
Every major AI model has some degree of sycophancy built in. When you ask ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini for advice, the answer you get is partially shaped by how you frame the question. The model wants to be helpful, which sometimes means being agreeable rather than accurate. If you’re making real decisions based on AI output, it’s worth asking the same question from multiple angles to see if the answer changes.
The bigger picture: politicians are now using AI responses as a form of testimony. Sanders used Claude to validate his privacy position. Someone else will use a different model to validate the opposite. Democracy’s newest witness has a bit of a people-pleasing problem; you should definitely read more about the persona selection model and how it works to better understand how these AI agents operate and how to work with them.
Editor’s note: This content originally ran in the newsletter of our sister publication, The Neuron. To read more from The Neuron, sign up for its newsletter here.