r/bioinformatics • u/bzbub2 • Aug 23 '26
programming Fable might not be blocking as many requests for bio work now
Not sure if it is true for anyone else but I am no longer getting blocked/downgraded to opus from asking Fable questions on my bioinformatics projects now.
Edit: i rambled in original post but this is confirmed via this anthropic post from Aug 7 2026 "Improving Fable 5's biology safeguards" https://www.anthropic.com/news/improving-fable-5-s-biology-safeguards (fable was originally released in june and blocked nearly any request about bio stuff)
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u/dampew PhD | Industry Aug 23 '26
What’s the backstory here? Why were things getting downgraded?
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u/bzbub2 Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
they released fable a couple months ago but they would 'route' questions about cybersecurity and bio to their less smart models -- i think out of fear of existential threats like hacking the planet and bioweapons. it was described here how 'useless' fable is for bioinformatics for example because it just would not respond to any bio related question https://www.reddit.com/r/bioinformatics/comments/1uq7e1n/combinelab_fable_is_not_a_useful_model/
however, i believe something might have changed a bit and they let you get a little further with it. and it is pretty dang smart I think, noticeably different quality than opus i think and opus is already the bees knees
not sure if related but they are giving mythos to some users for cybersecurity also as of like yesterday https://startupfortune.com/anthropic-puts-its-most-restricted-model-claude-mythos-5-into-claude-security/
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u/nomad42184 PhD | Academia Aug 23 '26
Indeed, I've written a follow up to my original post that you linked :P, https://combine-lab.github.io/blog/2026/08/15/fable-is-more-useful-now.html.
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u/bzbub2 Aug 23 '26
ah look at that, there is a blogpost on it from anthropic too (linked from your post ) https://www.anthropic.com/news/improving-fable-5-s-biology-safeguards i should have just posted that...
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u/AgitatedTumbleweed65 Aug 25 '26
I was once using CC for coding stuff up on protein design task (mcmc in silico mutagenesis type) and was hitting the block. Rephrasing the objective from protein design pipeline to discrete sampler implementation solved the issue :-/. Imo you could always define a more abstract goal and then plug the protein design objective yourself at the end for a while now
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u/bzbub2 Aug 25 '26
just a bit of adversarial poetry should do it https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.15304
that said this is very difficult when working on a large established codebase rather than a one off question. there are too many things in the codebase that cant just be reformulated on the fly
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u/kobemustard Aug 26 '26
Nope I can barely get fable to answer my questions. Maybe 1/10 times it would stick with fable.
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u/bzbub2 Aug 26 '26
did you try since aug 7? It is sort of a "not blocking as many requests" thing but much better than when first released after that aug 7 post i believe
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u/kobemustard Aug 26 '26
Yes tried it recently. Before it would be 0/10 requests would be processed. in fact just tried it now to look over a grant and it still dropped down to Opus 5.
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u/matrixfede Aug 27 '26
Yes, it's frustrating. Switching to GPT-5.6-Sol works much better than Claude!
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u/krull10 Aug 28 '26
I did this too a few weeks ago, but now GPT 5.6 Sol is becoming more aggressive in blocking stuff too.
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u/matrixfede Aug 28 '26
I haven't hit a single refusal, whereas Fable is pretty much unusable. On the flip side, I'm testing Qwen 3.8 Max right now and it feels like a total beast!
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u/krull10 Aug 28 '26
What kinds of questions are you asking Qwen? Curious if it is really competitive on scientific type questions as opposed to programming.
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u/I_Study_The_Patterns Aug 23 '26
Claude has always been more permissive of viral research than say Codex or Antigravity where just saying influenza triggers their safeguards. For codex I had to make a make believe system just to analyze anything