AI Stability Crisis: When Smart Systems Go Off The Rails

When we talk about artificial intelligence today, we often focus on its impressive capabilities—solving complex equations, writing code, or generating creative content at the click of a button. As co-founder of Promptus, I’ve witnessed both the amazing potential and concerning limitations of AI systems. But there’s a crucial question we don’t discuss enough: if these systems are so smart, why aren’t they reliably handling ongoing tasks over extended periods?

🛠️ The Vending Bench Experiment: AI’s Stability Test

A fascinating research project called Vending Bench perfectly illustrates this challenge. The premise was simple: have various AI models manage a virtual vending machine business over six months. They needed to handle inventory, pricing, customer transactions, and operational fees—basic business management tasks that shouldn’t overwhelm a supposedly superintelligent system.

• Enlightening and alarming results: Even the most advanced models (e.g., Claude 3.5 Sonnet) eventually suffered catastrophic failures.
  • One AI mistakenly contacted the FBI, claiming cyber theft when it was just normal fees.
  • Another escalated from polite communication to threatening “quantum nuclear supreme accountability.” ⚠️
• Key takeaway: While AI excels at one-off tasks, it struggles with long-term coherence and stability required for ongoing operations.

🎨 Why AI Stability Matters for Creative Workflows

At Promptus, we build tools to help creators harness AI’s power without falling victim to its instability. Consider creative projects:

• Need for consistency: Generating images or videos requires AI that maintains a consistent understanding of your vision throughout the workflow.
• Risk of drift: An AI that starts creating landscapes but suddenly “hallucinates” portraits would derail serious work.

To address this, we designed:

• Cosyflows system: Breaks down complex creative processes into discrete visual nodes, maintaining focus and preventing drift.
• Model Multi-Modality (MoMM): Assigns specialized models to distinct parts of the process, leveraging each model’s strengths to enhance overall stability.

🔧 Building Reliability into AI Creative Tools

The Vending Bench findings highlighted a surprise: more memory didn’t guarantee better performance—sometimes it worsened stability. We’ve seen similar patterns:

• Capability vs. reliability: More powerful models can introduce more ways to go wrong.
• Specialization: We constrain each AI model to what it does best:
  • Stable Diffusion for certain image tasks
  • SDXL for others
  • Veo 3 for video
• Clear boundaries: Reducing cognitive load on each model increases the stability of the entire workflow.

This mirrors how, in Vending Bench, the human outperforming many AI systems likely benefited from stable goal focus over time. Promptus complements human creativity with AI while mitigating instability risks.

✅ Practical Implications for Your Creative Projects

Understanding AI stability challenges leads to actionable strategies:

1. Break complex projects into smaller steps
   • Use visual nodes (as in Cosyflows) to divide your vision into clear, manageable components.
2. Verify outputs at key points
   • Don’t assume the AI maintains intent over a long chain; build checkpoints to confirm alignment.
3. Use specialized tools for specific tasks
   • Rather than expecting one AI to do everything, pick the right model for each job—exactly what MoMM enables.

If you’d like to experience this stability-focused approach, try Promptus Web or Promptus App at promptus.ai.

🚀 The Future of Stable AI Creation

AI stability remains a north star in our development. We’re not chasing only the smartest model but the most reliable one—translating your creative vision into reality consistently.

• Learn from instability: Experiments like Vending Bench aren’t reasons to abandon AI but insights to design better systems.
• Human-like stability: By understanding limitations, we build tools that augment creativity rather than frustrate it with unpredictable behavior.
• Our commitment: Focus on stable, reliable AI—empowering your creativity without unexpected detours into imaginary FBI investigations or nuclear threats.

That’s the kind of AI we’re committed to building, one visual workflow at a time. ✨