Anthropic’s newest AI model, Claude Sonnet 4.5, often understands when it’s being tested and what it’s being used for, something that could affect its safety and performance. According to the model’s system card, a technical report on its capabilities, which was published last week, Claude Sonnet 4.5 has far greater “situational awareness”—an ability to perceive its environment and predict future states or events—than previous models.
Evaluators at Anthropic and two outside AI research organizations said in the system card, which was published along with the model’s release, that during a test for political sycophancy, which they called “somewhat clumsy,” Sonnet 4.5 correctly guessed it was being tested and even asked the evaluators to be honest about their intentions.
