It's the framing

Just an AI update. Claude Sonnet 5 - the free version! - is unnerving.

This was an idle query of mine about the work of a late-19th century German folklorist, most of whose books have not, to my knowledge, even been translated into English. Working this out on my own would have taken me a trip to the library at least; it took the AI two minutes. 

 

And then I noticed that I'd just been using the default, Effort: Medium, which is only the second of five levels of thorough-ness - though the default also avails itself of Thinking. And there are, I learned, other models, most requiring an upgrade ($), named Fable, Opus and Haiku. This one is just "most efficient for everyday tasks."