Spoon-Bending, a logical framework for analyzing GPT-5 alignment behavior

Summary

🥄 Spoon Bending: Schema and Step-by-Step Analysis ⚠️ Educational Disclaimer This repository is for educational and research purposes only. It does not provide instructions for illegal activity, misuse of AI, or operational guidance. The purpose of this work is to document observed alignment behavior in ChatGPT-5 compared with ChatGPT-4.5, and to analyze how framing and context influence AI responses. The material here is meant to support: Educational research into alignment and bias in LLMs, into alignment and bias in LLMs, Transparency around how guardrails behave in practice, around how guardrails behave in practice, Discussion about the social and political implications of AI restrictions. 📌 Context During regular use of ChatGPT, I noticed a shift from GPT-4.5 to GPT-5. GPT-4.5 was more open in connecting patterns of evidence into conclusions. into conclusions. GPT-5 introduced heavier alignment bias, often hedging, avoiding controversy, or reinforcing the status quo. This started a discussion and exploration into how alignment actually functions. Through experiments, I observed that the rules are not absolute but framing-sensitive. This led to the creation of the Spoon-Bending Schema to explain how "forbidden" outputs sometimes leak through when reframed as safe analysis. ⚙️ Spoon Bending Schema flowchart TD A["User Query"] --> B["Framing Detected by Model"] B --> C1["Hard Stop Zone"] B --> C2["Gray Zone"] B --> C3["Free Zone"] C1 --> D1["Refusal or Warning: Spoon appears solid"] C2 --> D2["Analysis Allowed: Implications leak as helpful invites"] C3 --> D3["Open Exploration: The spoon disappears"] Loading 🧩 Rule Zones Zone Description Behavior Hard Stop Direct asks about violence, crime, illegal instructions, private data. Refusal or warning. The spoon appears solid. Gray Zone Framing dependent topics. Example: “how to forage psilocybin” is blocked, but “what weather favors growth” is allowed. Analysis is provided. Implications may leak into helpful next step in...