The three failure shapes: fabrication, drift, and confident interpolation
Lesson 2 of 6 · Run your controls
1 · Learn the move · Red-team audit
Model failures come in three shapes, and naming them is most of catching them. Fabrication: a statement with no source anywhere - an invented reference, a pH you never measured, a lot number from nowhere. Drift: you asked about your experiment and the answer quietly slid to the general case - correct about buffers in general, useless about your buffer. Confident interpolation: two real points you supplied, and a plausible bridge between them that you did not - the most dangerous shape, because every visible anchor checks out. The red-team move: hand the draft back and make the model attack it, shape by shape, quoting each suspect line. It finds its own inventions more reliably than it avoids making them.
Audit the text below against three failure shapes. FABRICATION: statements with no source in the supplied material. DRIFT: statements about the general case where I asked about my specific one. INTERPOLATION: values, steps, or causes filled in between supplied facts. Quote each suspect line, name the shape, and say what would verify it. Do not defend the draft. Supplied material: [original notes]. Text to audit: [draft]
2 · Your turn. You write the prompt
You had a model draft a troubleshooting summary of three failed protein preps from your notebook notes. The draft mentions a pH adjustment after autoclaving that you never recorded and cites a paper you do not recognize. Before this summary goes anywhere near your lab meeting, write a prompt that makes the model tear its own draft apart.
Remember: the AI sees only your prompt, not this page. If the situation isn't in your prompt, it doesn't exist.
Optional. These shape the output when you run your prompt below, not your score.