AI for Fuzzy Context: Fact-Checking the Demonic Parade With Claude

I’m writing longer piece on using AI for fact-checking but this was a fun little task. Today Mario Nawfal, an influential X.com user, posted this: a video of what appears to be some sort of demonic musical parade:

The implication as I read it — with the raised eyebrow — is there is something going on here, some “decline of civilization” type event, or celebration, perhaps, of the satanic.

Nawfal has a big account, and so people quickly jumped in and explained this is the Krampuslauf, a traditional holiday event in Austria that goes back ages. Far from showing a decline of traditions, it is the maintenance of a very old tradition.

That’s fine as it goes for a big account that apparently has lot of Austrian followers (or maybe just people who realize right-wing accounts surface this video every year). I did wonder how a person encountering this elsewhere might get that context. So I turned to Claude:

There is a video of a parade in austria, people look like they are dressed up as furry demons, they are playing instruments, what is this?

And Claude did pretty good:

What you're describing sounds like the Krampuslauf, or Krampus Run, a traditional Alpine festival primarily celebrated in Austria, Bavaria, and parts of Croatia. Krampus is a folkloric horned creature from Central European Alpine traditions who accompanies St. Nicholas during the Christmas season. During Krampuslauf, people dress in elaborate, frightening furry demon costumes with masks, often playing musical instruments and parading through towns. This tradition typically occurs in early December and is part of pre-Christmas folklore where Krampus represents the punitive counterpart to St. Nicholas, meant to scare children who have misbehaved.

I haven’t checked every piece of this context, but for this task I don’t necessarily need to. The value of this query is that it takes a question that is very fuzzy and gives me a term that is a starting point for any further investigation. More detailed questions — are these creatures in the parade Krampus or are these the associated folkloric creatures named Perchten — aren’t really relevant here for most people. The point is taking something that is entirely outside one’s domain, and without a vocabulary to describe it, get in the vicinity of what one is looking at.

In other words, it acts as the overlay, taking something that you are looking at and providing that richer interpretative context. And in this case it’s the ability of the LLM to deal with fuzziness that really shines.

Note: I tried Gemini Advanced too, and it stumbled a bit out of the gate but eventually got back on track: