When Claude Met Claude

Shower thoughts are typically best left in the shower. Such as: What might Claude the AI chatbot have to say about Claude Monet?Earlier this month, San Francisco’s de Young Museum unveiled its newest exhibition, “Monet and Venice,” which is dedicated to the impressionist painter’s beautiful and meditative canvases of the floating city. And Anthropic, perhaps having seized on a marketing opportunity, is one of the show’s lead sponsors. Through tomorrow, visitors are able to partake in a temporary “interactive experience” that Anthropic set up in a room adjacent to the galleries. Essentially, the AI firm turned two typewriters into interfaces to chat with Claude. You type in a question about the exhibition, and Claude, based on information about Monet that the museum provided, such as exhibit labels, punches out an answer onto the same sheet of cream cardstock.When I approached one of the Claude typewriters, which were placed next to art books and paintbrushes on top of wooden desks, an employee instructed me on how to proceed and stressed, repeatedly, that I should not prompt the bot with more than eight to 10 words. To get things started, Claude typed onto the paper, “What caught your eye in Monet and Venice? Type a word or short phrase and I’ll tell you more.” Questions I really wanted to ask—about the intentions behind and effects of the seemingly coarse weave of the canvases, or how Monet, obsessed with color, selected his pigments—were hard to pare down on the spot. I ...