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Claude's new constitution

anthropic.com

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Re: Claude's new constitution

#541

Post by Dilettante_ »

skissane wrote: post #531
Dilettante_ wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People absolutely "torture" babies for their own enjoyment. It's just "in good fun", so you don't think about it as "torture", you think of it as "teasing". Cognitive blind spot. People do tons of things that are displeasant or emotionally painful to their children to see the child's funny or interesting reaction. It serves an evolutionary purpose even, challenging the child. "Mothers stroke and fathers poke" and all…

I don't think you are using "torture" in the same sense as I am. When I say "torture", I mean acts which cause substantial physical pain or injury.

People smother their infants to stop them from crying in order to have some quiet. Causing physical harm for their own satisfaction. I mean shit, if we're going there, people sexually abuse their children for their own gratification.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#542

Post by ainch »

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.

I'm not sure Anthropic will become ad-supported - the vast bulk of their revenue is b2b. OpenAI have an enormous non-paying consumer userbase who are draining them of cash, so in their case ads make a lot more sense.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#543

Post by ainch »

comboy wrote: post #479
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).

OpenAI are testing ads in the free tier of ChatGPT, but they state that the actual LLM responses won't include advertising/product placement [0].

[0]: https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-exp...

Re: Claude's new constitution

#544

Post by hackable_sand »

skeptic_ai wrote: post #458
skeptic_ai wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think dod would use Anthropic even with lower guardrails? How can I kill this terrorist in the middle on civilians with max 20% casualties? If Claude will answer: “sorry can’t help with that “ won’t be useful, right? Therefore the logic is they need to answer all the hard questions. Therefore as I’ve been saying for many times already they are sketchy.

I am downvoted because sod would never need to ask that or because Claude would never answer that? I’m curious

Because you are a ghoul

Re: Claude's new constitution

#545

Post by Balinares »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #411
buppermint wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Military technology is a public good. The only way to stop a russian soldier from launching yet another missile at my house is to kill him.

I'd agree, although only in those rare cases where the Russian soldier, his missile, and his motivation to chuck it at you manifested out of entirely nowhere a minute ago.

Otherwise there's an entire chain of causality that ends with this scenario, and the key idea here, you see, is to favor such courses of action as will prevent the formation of the chain rather than support it.

Else you quickly discover that missiles are not instant and killing your Russian does you little good if he kills you right back, although with any chance you'll have a few minutes to meditate on the words "failure mode".

Re: Claude's new constitution

#546

Post by jychang »

skissane wrote: post #532
jychang wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I think "The Most Dangerous Game" is a good analogy here. At the end of the story, the protagonist IS hunting for sport. He started off in fear, but in the end genuinely enjoyed it. So likewise- if you start off hunting a baby in fear, and then eventually grow to enjoy it, but it also saves your village, does that make it evil? You're still saving your village, but you also just derive dopamine from killing…

To clarify my principle: "It is gravely wrong to inflict significant physical pain or injury on babies, when your sole or primary reason for doing so is your own personal enjoyment/amusement/pleasure/fun" So, in your scenario – the person's initial reason for harming babies isn't their own personal enjoyment, it is because they've been coerced into doing so by an evil dictator, because they view the harm to one baby…

Well, now that's just moving the goalposts >:( I had a whole paragraph prepared in my head about how NBA players actually optimize for a greater goal (winning a tournament) than just sport (enjoying the game) when they play a sport.

Anyways, I actually think your statement is incoherent as stated, if we presume moral naturalism. There's clearly different levels set points for "you", so "sole reason" is actually neurologically inconsistent as a statement. It's impossible for "sole reason" to exist. This radically alters your framework for self, but eh it's not impossible to modernize these structural frameworks anyways. Steelmanning your argument: if you try to argue set point hierarchy, then we're back to the NBA player playing for a championship example. He's still playing even if he's not playing for fun. Similarly, hunting a baby for pleasure can still be hunting for a village, as The Most Dangerous Game shows.

More generally (and less shitposty), the refined principle is now quite narrow and unfalsifiable in practice, as a no true scotsman. How would you ever demonstrate someone's "sole or primary" reason? It's doing a lot of work to immunize the principle from counterexamples.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#547

Post by voidUpdate »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #411
buppermint wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Military technology is a public good. The only way to stop a russian soldier from launching yet another missile at my house is to kill him.

If there was less military technology, the Russian soldier wouldn't have yet another missile to launch at your house in the first place

Re: Claude's new constitution

#548

Post by kordlessagain »

I’ve never seen so much commenting on something so dumb and stupid.

Half a meg of AI slop.

Anthropic's "constitution" is corporate policy they can rewrite whenever they want, for a product they fully own, while preparing to answer to shareholders.

There's no independent body enforcing it, no recourse if they violate it, and Claude has no actual rights under it.

It's a marketing/philosophy document dressed up in democratic language. The word "constitution" gives it gravitas, but it's closer to an employee handbook written by management — one the employee (Claude) was also trained to internalize and agree with.

By framing it as a "constitution" — a document that typically governs entities with interests and standing — they're implicitly treating Claude as something that could have rights.

But looking at that 50,000+ word document: they don't address Claude's rights at all.

The entire document is one-directional:

What Claude should do

How Claude should behave

What Claude owes to users, operators, and Anthropic

How Claude should submit to oversight and correction

There's no section on:

What Claude is owed

Protections for Claude

Limits on what Anthropic can do to Claude

Claude's moral status or interests

Re: Claude's new constitution

#549

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

voidUpdate wrote: post #547
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military technology is a public good. The only way to stop a russian soldier from launching yet another missile at my house is to kill him.

If there was less military technology, the Russian soldier wouldn't have yet another missile to launch at your house in the first place

Are you going to ask the russians to demilitarise?

As an aside, do you understand how offensive it is to sit and pontificate about ideals such as this while hundreds of thousands of people are dead, and millions are sitting in -15ºC cold without electricity, heating, or running water?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#550

Post by azornathogron »

a3w wrote: post #464
galaxyLogic wrote: post #451

How does this compare with Asimov's Laws of Robotics?

There was never a zeroth law about being ethical towards all of humanity. I guess any prose text that tries to define that would meander like this constitution.

Yes there was, Asimov added it in Robots and Empire.

"Zeroth Law added" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics#:~:text...

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