Claude's new constitution • Hacker News Board

Re: Claude's new constitution

#441

Post by killingtime74 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 8:00 AM UTC

buppermint wrote: post #369

levocardia wrote: post #95

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…

Anthropic has already has lower guardrails for DoD usage: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/680465/a... It's interesting to me that a company that claims to be all about the public good: - Sells LLMs for military usage + collaborates with Palantir - Releases by far the least useful research of all the major US and Chinese labs, minus vanity interp projects from their interns - Is the only major lab…

Both weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin (defending freedom) and cigarette makers like Philip Morris ( "Delivering a Smoke-Free Future.") also claim to be for the public good. Maybe don't believe or rely on anything you hear from business people.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#442

Post by Culonavirus » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 8:00 AM UTC

spicyusername wrote: post #164

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #140

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.

> That's probably because we have yet to discover any universal moral standards.

It's good to keep in mind that "we" here means "we, the western liberals". All the Christians and Muslims (...) on the planet have a very different view.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#443

Post by sebzim4500 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 8:05 AM UTC

buppermint wrote: post #369

levocardia wrote: post #95

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…

Anthropic has already has lower guardrails for DoD usage: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/680465/a... It's interesting to me that a company that claims to be all about the public good: - Sells LLMs for military usage + collaborates with Palantir - Releases by far the least useful research of all the major US and Chinese labs, minus vanity interp projects from their interns - Is the only major lab…

> Releases by far the least useful research of all the major US and Chinese labs, minus vanity interp projects from their interns

From what I've seen the anthropic interp team is the most advanced in the industry. What makes you think otherwise?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#444

Post by strideashort » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 8:08 AM UTC

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #140

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…

Humans are not able to accept objective truth. A lot off so-called “truth” are in-group narratives.

If we tried to find the truth, we would not be able to agree on _methodology_ to accept what truth _is_.

In essence, we select our truth by carefully picking the methodology which leads us to it.

Some examples, from the top of my head:

- virology / germ theory

- climate change

- em drive

Re: Claude's new constitution

#445

Post by retinaros » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 8:10 AM UTC

buppermint wrote: post #369

levocardia wrote: post #95

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…

Anthropic has already has lower guardrails for DoD usage: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/680465/a... It's interesting to me that a company that claims to be all about the public good: - Sells LLMs for military usage + collaborates with Palantir - Releases by far the least useful research of all the major US and Chinese labs, minus vanity interp projects from their interns - Is the only major lab…

You just need to hear the guy stance on china open models to understand They not the goods guys.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#446

Post by ruszki » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 8:11 AM UTC

Culonavirus wrote: post #442

spicyusername wrote: post #164

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.

> That's probably because we have yet to discover any universal moral standards. It's good to keep in mind that "we" here means "we, the western liberals". All the Christians and Muslims (...) on the planet have a very different view.

Saying that they “discovered” them is a stretch.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#447

Post by PeterStuer » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 8:11 AM UTC

levocardia wrote: post #95

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…

The 'general' proprietary models will always be ones constrained to be affordable to operate for mass scale inference. We have on occasion seen deployed models get significantly 'dumber' (e.g. very clear in the GPT-3 era) as a tradeoff for operational efficiency.

Inside, you can ditch those constraints as not only you are not serving such a mass audience, but you absorb the full benefit of frontrunning on the public.

The amount of capital owed does force any AI company to agressively explore and exploit all revenue channels. This is not an 'option'. Even pursuing relentless and extreme monetization regardless of any 'ethics' or 'morals' will see most of them bankrupt. This is an uncomfortable thruth for many to accept.

Some will be more open in admitting this, others will try to hide, but the systemics are crystal clear.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#448

Post by retinaros » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 8:13 AM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #291

levocardia wrote: post #95

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…

My personal hypothesis is that the most useful and productive models will only come from "pure" training, just raw uncensored, uncurated data, and RL that focuses on letting the AI decide for itself and steer it's own ship. These AIs would likely be rather abrasive and frank. Think of humanoid robots that will help around your house. We will want them to be physically weak (if for nothing more than liability), so we…

Rlhf helps. The current one is just coming out of someone with dementia just like we went through in the US during bidenlitics. We need to have politics removed from this pipeline

Re: Claude's new constitution

#449

Post by lucianbr » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 8:15 AM UTC

Culonavirus wrote: post #442

spicyusername wrote: post #164

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.

> That's probably because we have yet to discover any universal moral standards. It's good to keep in mind that "we" here means "we, the western liberals". All the Christians and Muslims (...) on the planet have a very different view.

What do you think the word "universal" means?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#450

Post by RobotToaster » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 8:16 AM UTC

nandomrumber wrote: post #413

RobotToaster wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>incorrigibility What an odd thing to include in a list like that.

Incorrigibly is not the same word as encourage. Otherwise, what’s the confusion here?

>In philosophy, incorrigibility is a property of a philosophical proposition, which implies that it is necessarily true simply by virtue of being believed. A common example of such a proposition is René Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am").

>In law, incorrigibility concerns patterns of repeated or habitual disobedience of minors with respect to their guardians.

That's what wiki gives as a definition. It seems out of place compared to the others.