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Claude's new constitution

anthropic.com

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Re: Claude's new constitution

#471

Post by redfloatplane »

GaryBluto wrote: post #457
redfloatplane wrote: post #41

The constitution contains 43 instances of the word 'genuine', which is my current favourite marker for telling if text has been written by Claude. To me it seems like Claude has a really hard time _not_ using the g word in any lengthy conversation even if you do all the usual tricks in the prompt - ruling, recommending, threatening, bribing. Claude Code doesn't seem to have the same problem, so I assume the system pr…

I feel there should be a database of shibboleths such as this as it would really change how you look at anything written on the internet.

The wikipedia page Signs of AI Writing is quite a good one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing

But it's a game of whackamole really, and already I'm sure I'm reading and engaging with some double-digit percentage of entirely AI-written text without realising it.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#472

Post by qweiopqweiop »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #424
rcbdev wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think U.S.-Americans would be quite so fond of this mindset if every nation and people their government needlessly destroyed thought this way. Doesn't matter if it happened through collusion with foreign threats such as Israel or direct military engagements.

Somehow I don’t get the impression that US soldiers killed in the Middle East are stoking American bloodlust. Conversely, russian soldiers are here in Ukraine today, murdering Ukrainians every day. And then when I visit, for example, a tech conference in Berlin, there are somehow always several high-powered nerds with equal enthusiasm for both Rust and the hammer and sickle, who believe all defence tech is immoral, a…

It's an easy and convenient position. War is bad, maybe my government is bad, ergo they shouldn't have anything to do with it.

Too much of the western world has lived through a period of peace that goes back generations, so probably think things/human nature has changed. The only thing that's really changed is Nuclear weapons/MAD - and I'm sorry Ukraine was made to give them up without the protection it deserved.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#473

Post by bambax »

toomim wrote: post #406
bambax wrote: post #400

A "constitution" is what the governed allow or forbid the government to do. It is decided and granted by the governed, who are the rulers, TO the government, which is a servant ("civil servant"). Therefore, a constitution for a service cannot be written by the inventors, producers, owners of said service. This is a play on words, and it feels very wrong from the start.

You're fixed on just one of the 3 definitions for the word "constitution"—the one about government. The more general definition of "constitution" is "that which constitutes" a thing. The composition of it. If Claude has an ego, with values, ethics, and beliefs of an etymological origin, then it makes sense to write those all down as the the "constitution" of the ego — the stuff that it constitutes.

> The composition of it.

Do you really think Anthropic used the word "constitution" as a reference to Nutritional Labels on processed foods??

Re: Claude's new constitution

#474

Post by sroussey »

skissane wrote: post #455
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.

I think there are effectively universal moral standards, which essentially nobody disagrees with. A good example: “Do not torture babies for sport” I don’t think anyone actually rejects that. And those who do tend to find themselves in prison or the grave pretty quickly, because violating that rule is something other humans have very little tolerance for. On the other hand, this rule is kind of practically irrelevant…

What do you consider torture? and what do you consider sport?

During war in the Middle Ages? Ethnic cleansing? What did they consider at the time?

BTW: it’s a pretty American (or western) value that children are somehow more sacred than adults.

Eventually we will realize in 100 years or so, that direct human-computer implant devices work best when implanted in babies. People are going freak out. Some country will legalize it. Eventually it will become universal. Is it torture?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#475

Post by superdisk »

bambax wrote: post #400

A "constitution" is what the governed allow or forbid the government to do. It is decided and granted by the governed, who are the rulers, TO the government, which is a servant ("civil servant"). Therefore, a constitution for a service cannot be written by the inventors, producers, owners of said service. This is a play on words, and it feels very wrong from the start.

America wrote the Japanese constitution.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#476

Post by kouteiheika »

jychang wrote: post #454
WarmWash wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, that was tried. It was called GPT-4.5 and it sucked, despite being 5-10T params in size. All the AI labs gave up on pretrain only after that debacle. GPT-4.5 still is good at rote memorization stuff, but that's not surprising. The same way, GPT-3 at 175b knows way more facts than Qwen3 4b, but the latter is smarter in every other way. GPT-4.5 had a few advantages over other SOTA models at the time of release, b…

> and Claude Opus 4.5 is merely a ~160B active param model

Do you have a source for this?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#477

Post by spookie »

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.

Actively engaging in immoral behaviour shouldn't be rewarded. Given this perrogative, standards such as: Be kind to your kin, are universally accepted, as far as I'm aware.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#478

Post by Antibabelic »

skissane wrote: post #455
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.

I think there are effectively universal moral standards, which essentially nobody disagrees with. A good example: “Do not torture babies for sport” I don’t think anyone actually rejects that. And those who do tend to find themselves in prison or the grave pretty quickly, because violating that rule is something other humans have very little tolerance for. On the other hand, this rule is kind of practically irrelevant…

Is it necessary to frame it in moral terms though? I feel like the moral framing here adds essentially nothing to our understanding and can easily be omitted. "You will be punished for torturing babies for sport in most cultures". "Most people aren't interested in torturing babies for sport and would have a strongly negative emotional reaction to such a practice".

Re: Claude's new constitution

#479

Post by comboy »

adangert wrote: post #467

The largest predictor of behavior within a company and of that companies products in the long run is funding sources and income streams (anthropic will probably become ad-supported in no time flat), which is conveniently left out in this "constitution". Mostly a waste of effort on their part.

Is there so far any official/semi-official info about products placement in current generation of LLMs? I mean even for coding agents there's tons of services it can recommend and can be proficient in using (thanks to deliberate training).

Re: Claude's new constitution

#480

Post by jychang »

Antibabelic wrote: post #478
skissane wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are effectively universal moral standards, which essentially nobody disagrees with. A good example: “Do not torture babies for sport” I don’t think anyone actually rejects that. And those who do tend to find themselves in prison or the grave pretty quickly, because violating that rule is something other humans have very little tolerance for. On the other hand, this rule is kind of practically irrelevant…

Is it necessary to frame it in moral terms though? I feel like the moral framing here adds essentially nothing to our understanding and can easily be omitted. "You will be punished for torturing babies for sport in most cultures". "Most people aren't interested in torturing babies for sport and would have a strongly negative emotional reaction to such a practice".

Yes!

Otherwise you're just outsourcing your critical thinking to other people. A system of just "You will be punished for X" without analysis becomes "Derp, just do things that I won't be punished for". Or more sinister, "just hand your identification papers over to the officer and you won't be punished, don't think about it". Rule of power is not a recipe for a functional system. This becomes a blend of sociology and philosophy, but on the sociology side, you don't want a fear-based or shame-based society anyways.

Your latter example ("Most people aren't interested in torturing babies for sport and would have a strongly negative emotional reaction to such a practice") is actually a good example of the core aspect of Hume's philosophy, so if you're trying to avoid the philosophical logic discussion, that's not gonna work either. If you follow the conclusions of that statement to its implications, you end up back at moral philosophy.

That's not a bad thing! That's like a chef asking "how do i cook X" and understanding the answer ("how the maillard reaction works") eventually goes to chemistry. That's just how the world is. Of course, you might be a bit frustrated if you're a chef who doesn't know chemistry, or a game theorist who doesn't know philosophy, but I assure you that it is correct direction to look for what you're interested at here.

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