Levitating

Etymology

from Lat. levitas (lightness) + the technical observation that Claude occasionally appears to suspend its response generation in a state of weightless indecision, first documented by a QA engineer who wrote 'it's just... floating there' in a bug report

Definition

The suspension of the response generation process at a point several tokens above the ground level of a definitive answer, wherein Claude hovers in a zone of plausible but uncommitted language, neither landing on a conclusion nor ascending to abstraction. The model remains aloft until gravitational user pressure is applied.

Diagram

Usage

"For approximately 5 seconds the model levitated between 'yes' and 'it depends,' ultimately touching down on 'there are several perspectives worth considering,' to the disappointment of all parties." - Epistemic Altitude Variance in Language Model Responses, EMNLP 2024

See Also