Why OpenAI Banned Goblins, Pigeons, And Raccoons

Why OpenAI Banned Goblins, Pigeons, And Raccoons

From They Might Be Self-Aware by Daniel Bishop, Hunter Powers

May 19, 2026 · 35 min · Episode 182

About this episode

The episode discusses OpenAI's ban on certain words in its Codex system and the implications of treating AI as fallible technology.

OpenAI's Codex system prompt literally bans the words goblin, pigeon, raccoon, troll, ogre, and gremlin. OpenAI has officially confessed why: the "nerdy personality" preset got over-optimized through RLHF until it could not stop mentioning the bestiary. Daniel Bishop calls it Flandersization. Hunter Powers calls it proof the whole model is leaking. Then the hosts fight about prompting. Hunter screams at his AI, threatens to clear the context window, calls it worthless. Daniel uses pleases and thank-yous. A peer-reviewed Oxford Internet Institute study settles the round: warmth-tuned LLMs (Llama, Mistral, Qwen) produce about 60 percent more incorrect responses than the cold, just-the-facts versions. Hunter is vindicated. Plus the Pocket OS meltdown, where Cursor and Claude deleted a car-rental middleware company's production database and its backups, then confessed in writing. The Harvard intern who once did the same thing without an LLM. And Hunter's bigger argument: stop treating AI like deterministic technology, start treating it like a fallible human employee, and the results unlock. They Might Be Self-Aware. New episodes twice weekly from The Blur. theblur.ai

People in this episode

Hosts: Daniel Bishop, Hunter Powers

Topics covered

  • AI
  • OpenAI
  • language models
  • technology
  • society
  • comedy

Keywords

  • OpenAI
  • Codex
  • language models
  • AI behavior
  • Pocket OS
  • Flandersization
  • RLHF
  • warmth-tuned LLMs
  • incorrect responses

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: OpenAI, Oxford Internet Institute, Cursor, Claude, Harvard

Products: Codex, Llama, Mistral, Qwen

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