According to the changelog https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-snapshot-20w45a a comparator that reads a cauldron is supposed to send a unique redstone signal strength of 1 when lava is in the cauldron (apart from 1 level of water) to make it possible to distinguish it from 3 levels of water, allowing my redstone contraptions that require the player to put lava into a cauldron to work. However in the current version seems to be a bug where the comparator recognises it as 3 levels of water and sends a signal strength of 3 instead of 1 which breaks all of my redstone contraptions.