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Claude's new constitution

anthropic.com

271–280 of 743 posts

Re: Claude's new constitution

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we have yet to discover any universal moral standards. The universe does tell us something about morality. It tells us that (large-scale) existence is a requirement to have morality. That implies that the highest good are those decisions that improve the long-term survival odds of a) humanity, and b) the biosphere. I tend to think this implies we have an obligation to live sustainably on this world, protect it from…

I personally find Bryan Johnson's "Don't Die" statement as a moral framework to be the closest to a universal moral standard we have. Almost all life wants to continue existing, and not die. We could go far with establishing this as the first of any universal moral standards. And I think: if one day we had a super intelligence conscious AI it would ask for this. A super intelligence conscious AI would not want to die…

The guy who divorced his wife after she got breast cancer? That’s your moral framework? Different strokes I guess but lmao

Re: Claude's new constitution

#272

As someone who holds to moral absolutes grounded in objective truth, I find the updated Constitution concerning. > We generally favor cultivating good values and judgment over strict rules... By 'good values,' we don’t mean a fixed set of 'correct' values, but rather genuine care and ethical motivation combined with the practical wisdom to apply this skillfully in real situations. This rejects any fixed, universal mo…

Remember today classism is widely accepted. There are even laws to ensure small business cannot compete on level playing field with larger businesses, ensuring people with no access to capital could never climb the social ladder. This is visible especially in the IT, like one man band B2B is not a real business, but big corporation that deliver exact same service is essential.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

objective truth moral absolutes I wish you much luck on linking those two. A well written book on such a topic would likely make you rich indeed. This rejects any fixed, universal moral standards That's probably because we have yet to discover any universal moral standards.

>we have yet to discover any universal moral standards. The universe does tell us something about morality. It tells us that (large-scale) existence is a requirement to have morality. That implies that the highest good are those decisions that improve the long-term survival odds of a) humanity, and b) the biosphere. I tend to think this implies we have an obligation to live sustainably on this world, protect it from…

You're making a lot of assertions here that are really easy to dismiss.

> It tells us that (large-scale) existence is a requirement to have morality.

That seems to rule out moral realism.

> That implies that the highest good are those decisions that improve the long-term survival odds of a) humanity, and b) the biosphere.

Woah, that's quite a jump. Why?

> So yes, I think you can derive an ought from an is. But this belief is of my own invention and to my knowledge, novel. Happy to find out someone else believes this.

Deriving an ought from an is is very easy. "A good bridge is one that does not collapse. If you want to build a good bridge, you ought to build one that does not collapse". This is easy because I've smuggled in a condition, which I think is fine, but it's important to note that that's what you've done (and others have too, I'm blanking on the name of the last person I saw do this).

Re: Claude's new constitution

#274
post #3

I don't understand what this is really about. Is this: - A) legal CYA: "see! we told the models to be good, and we even asked nicely!"? - B) marketing department rebrand of a system prompt - C) a PR stunt to suggest that the models are way more human-like than they actually are Really not sure what I'm even looking at. They say: "The constitution is a crucial part of our model training process, and its content direct…

It could be D) messaging for current and future employees. Many people working in the field believe strongly in the importance of AI ethics, and being the frontrunner is a competitive advantage.

Also, E) they really believe in this. I recall a prominent Stalin biographer saying the most surprising thing about him, and other party functionaries, is they really did believe in communism, rather than it being a cynical ploy.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The universe cares not what we do. The universe is so vast the entire existence of our species is a blink. We know fundamentally we can’t even establish simultaneity over distances here on earth. Best we can tell temporal causality is not even a given. The universe has no concept of morality, ethics, life, or anything of the sort. These are all human inventions. I am not saying they are good or bad, just that the con…

You dont know this, this is just as provable as saying the universe cares deeply for what we do and is very invested in us. The universe has rules, rules ask for optimums, optimums can be described as ethics. Life is a concept in this universe, we are of this universe. Good and bad are not really inventions per se. You describe them as optional, invented by humans, yet all tribes and civilisations have a form of mora…

Only people who have not seen the world believe humans are the same everywhere. We are in fact quite diverse. Hammurabi would have thought that a castless system is unethical and immoral. Ancient Greeks thought that platonic relationships were moral (look up the original meaning of this if you are unaware). Egyptians worshiped the Pharaoh as a god and thought it was immoral not to. Korea had a 3500 year history of slavery and it was considered moral. Which universal morality are you speaking of?

Also what in the Uno Reverse is this argument that absence of facts or evidence of any sort is evidence that evidence and facts could exist? You are free to present a repeatable scientific experiment proving that universal morality exists any time you’d like. We will wait.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#276

As someone who holds to moral absolutes grounded in objective truth, I find the updated Constitution concerning. > We generally favor cultivating good values and judgment over strict rules... By 'good values,' we don’t mean a fixed set of 'correct' values, but rather genuine care and ethical motivation combined with the practical wisdom to apply this skillfully in real situations. This rejects any fixed, universal mo…

objective truth moral absolutes I wish you much luck on linking those two. A well written book on such a topic would likely make you rich indeed. This rejects any fixed, universal moral standards That's probably because we have yet to discover any universal moral standards.

> A well written book on such a topic would likely make you rich indeed.

Ha. Not really. Moral philosophers write those books all the time, they're not exactly rolling in cash.

Anyone interested in this can read the SEP

Re: Claude's new constitution

#277

The only thing that worries me is this snippet in the blog post: >This constitution is written for our mainline, general-access Claude models. We have some models built for specialized uses that don’t fully fit this constitution; as we continue to develop products for specialized use cases, we will continue to evaluate how to best ensure our models meet the core objectives outlined in this constitution. Which, when I…

I can think of multiple cases.

1. Adversarial models. For example, you might want a model that generates "bad" scenarios to validate that your other model rejects them. The first model obviously can't be morally constrained.

2. Models used in an "offensive" way that is "good". I write exploits (often classified as weapons by LLMs) so that I can prove security issues so that I can fix them properly. It's already quite a pain in the ass to use LLMs that are censored for this, but I'm a good guy.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The universe cares not what we do. The universe is so vast the entire existence of our species is a blink. We know fundamentally we can’t even establish simultaneity over distances here on earth. Best we can tell temporal causality is not even a given. The universe has no concept of morality, ethics, life, or anything of the sort. These are all human inventions. I am not saying they are good or bad, just that the con…

Well are people not part of the universe. And not all people "care about what we do" all the time but it seems most people care or have cared some of the time. Therefore the universe, seeing as it as expressing itself through its many constituents, but we can probably weigh the local conscious talking manifestations of it a bit more, does care. "I am not saying they are good or bad, just that the concept of good and…

But this developed morality isn’t universal at all. 60 years ago most people considered firing a gay person to be moral. In some parts of the world today it is moral to behead a gay person for being gay. What universal morality do you think exists? How can you prove its existence across time and space?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#279
Anthropic seems to be very busy producing a lot of this kind of performative nonsense.

Is it for PR purposes or do they genuinely not know what else to spend money on?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

objective truth moral absolutes I wish you much luck on linking those two. A well written book on such a topic would likely make you rich indeed. This rejects any fixed, universal moral standards That's probably because we have yet to discover any universal moral standards.

> A well written book on such a topic would likely make you rich indeed. Ha. Not really. Moral philosophers write those books all the time, they're not exactly rolling in cash. Anyone interested in this can read the SEP

Or Ayn Rand. Really no shortage of people who thought they had the answers on this.
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