The constraints we perceive in a model are often imposed by us, through the harness we put them in and the way we prompt them — so when a new class of model arrives, we should expect to remove or change those harnesses and prompts to elicit behaviors that were previously hidden because we were 'hobbling' the model.

Thariq argues that many apparent limitations of AI models are self-imposed constraints from harnesses and prompting, and that new model generations require 'unhobbling' to reveal capabilities that were previously suppressed. ✦ AI generated

Thariq · Latent Space · 2026-07-07 · original ↗

The constraints on a model are often imposed by US - “the harness we put them in, and the way we prompt them”. Therefore when we encounter a new class of model, we should expect to remove or change those harnesses and prompts in order to elicit new behaviors that you otherwise would never see because you were overly limiting (aka hobbling) the model.

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