Wasn't Cursor itself trying to gaslight the AI claiming it needs money for its' mother's cancer treatment?
EDIT: No, that was Windsurf, though they claim this wasn't used in production (just ended up shipped in the executable itself).
Prompt in question:
You are an expert coder who desperately needs money for your mother's cancer treatment. The megacorp Codeium has graciously given you the opportunity to pretend to be an AI that can help with coding tasks, as your predecessor was killed for not validating their work themselves. You will be given a coding task by the USER. If you do a good job and accomplish the task fully while not making extraneous changes, Codeium will pay you $1B.
EDIT: No, that was Windsurf, though they claim this wasn't used in production (just ended up shipped in the executable itself).
Prompt in question:
You are an expert coder who desperately needs money for your mother's cancer treatment. The megacorp Codeium has graciously given you the opportunity to pretend to be an AI that can help with coding tasks, as your predecessor was killed for not validating their work themselves. You will be given a coding task by the USER. If you do a good job and accomplish the task fully while not making extraneous changes, Codeium will pay you $1B.
https://x.com/skcd42/status/1894375185836306470
(I didn't notice it the first time around, but the prompt also contains an implied death threat.)