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Claude's new constitution

anthropic.com

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Re: Claude's new constitution

#571

Post by throwpoaster »

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.

We have had stable moral standards in the West for about five thousand years.

Are you making some kind of pomo argument about Aztecs or something?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#573

Post by Amezarak »

skissane wrote: post #495
sroussey wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 leg…

> What do you consider torture? and what do you consider sport? By "torturing babies for sport" I mean inflicting pain or injury on babies for fun, for pleasure, for enjoyment, as a game or recreation or pastime or hobby. Doing it for other reasons (be they good reasons or terrible reasons) isn't "torturing babies for sport". Harming or killing babies in war or genocide isn't "torturing babies for sport", because you…

You can find many ancient cultures who tortured babies for sport when they captured them in raids.

Exposure and infanticide was also very common in many places.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#574

Post by zoobab »

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…

"Actively lobbies to restrict Americans from access to open weight models"

Do you have a reference/link?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#575

Post by evrydayhustling »

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.

I think many people would agree that the pursuit of that connection is valuable, even if it is never completed.

Many of the same people (like me) would say that the biggest enemy of that pursuit is thinking you've finished the job.

That's what Anthropic is avoiding in this constitution - how pathetic would be if AI permanently enshrined the moral value of one subgroup of the elite of one generation, with no room for further exploration?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#576

Post by the_other »

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…

I doubt it's "universal". Do coyotes and orcas follow this rule?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#577

Post by djeastm »

haritha-j wrote: post #491

"Constitution" "we express our uncertainty about whether Claude might have some kind of consciousness" "we care about Claude’s psychological security, sense of self, and wellbeing" Is this grandstanding for our benefit or do these people actually believe they're Gods over a new kind of entity?

They put on ridiculous airs, but they're making damn fine LLMs.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#578

Post by teiferer »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #516
teiferer wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the short run, today, you of course have to shoot back. What else can you do.. In the long run, just piling up more military is not the solution.

> In the long run, just piling up more military is not the solution. Except it would have prevented the invasion in the first place.

Again, in the short run and if only Ukraine did that, sure. But that's too simplistic thinking.

If every country doubled its military, then the relative stengths wouldn't change and nobody would be more or less safe. But we'd all be poorer. If instead we work towards a world with more cooperation and less conflict, then the world can get safer without a single dollar more spent on military budgets. There is plenty of research into this. But sadly there is also plenty of lobbying from the military industrial complex. And simplistic fear mongering (with which I'm not attacking you personally, just stating it in general) doesn't help either. Especially tech folks tend to look for technical solutions, which is a category that "more tanks/bombs/drones/..." falls into. But building peace is not necessarily about more tanks. It's not a technical problem, so can't be solved with technical means. In the long run.

Again, in the short run, of course you gotta defend yourself, and your country has my full support.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#579

Post by ang_cire »

jychang wrote: post #489
Antibabelic wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did not correctly understand what I said. I am not saying that hunting babies for sport is immoral because you will get punished for it. I am saying that there isn't any useful knowledge about the statement "hunting babies for sport is bad" that requires a moral framing. Morality is redundant. The fact that you will get punished for hunting babies for sport is just one of the reasons why hunting babies for sport…

"there isn't any useful knowledge" "Morality is redundant." I strongly dispute this statement, and honestly find it baffling that you would claim as such. The fact that you will be punished for murdering babies is BECAUSE it is morally bad, not the other way around! We didn't write down the laws/punishment for fun, we wrote the laws to match our moral systems! Or do you believe that we design our moral systems based…

I'm not interested in wading into the wider discussion, but I do want to bring up one particular point, which is where you said

> do you believe that we design our moral systems based on our laws of punishment? That is... quite a claim.

This is absolutely something we do: our purely technical, legal terms often feed back into our moral frameworks. Laws are even created to specifically be used to change peoples' perceptions of morality.

An example of this is "felon". There is no actual legal definition of what a felony is or isn't in the US. A misdemeanor in one state can be a felony in another. It can be anything from mass murder to traffic infractions. Yet we attach a LOT of moral weight to 'felon'.

The word itself is even treated as a form of punishment; a label attached to someone permanently, that colors how (almost) every person who interacts with them (who's aware of it) will perceive them, morally.

Another example is rhetoric along the lines of "If they had complied, they wouldn't have been hurt", which is explicitly the use of a punishment (being hurt) to create an judgement/perception of immorality on the part of the person injured (i.e. that they must have been non-compliant (immoral), otherwise they would not have been being punished (hurt)). The fact they were being punished, means they were immoral.

Immigration is an example where there's been a seismic shift in the moral frameworks of certain groups, based on the repeated emphasis of legal statutes. A law being broken is used to influence people to shift their moral framework to consider something immoral that they didn't care about before.

Point being, our laws and punishments absolutely create feedback loops into our moral frameworks, precisely because we assume laws and punishments to be just.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#580

Post by Applejinx »

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…

Subjective ethics ARE the de facto standard and you can make a case that subjective ethics are the de jure standard for AI.

How can you possibly run AI while at the same time thinking you can spell out its responses? If you could spell out the response in advance there's no point expensively having the AI at all. You're explicitly looking for the subjective answer that wasn't just looking up a rule in a table, and some AI makers are explicitly weighting for 'anti-woke' answering on ethics subjects.

Subjective ethics are either the de facto or the de jure standard for the ethics of a functioning AI… where people are not trying to remove the subjectivity to make the AI ethically worse (making it less subjective and more the opinionated AI they want it to be).

This could cut any sort of way, doesn't automatically make the subjectivity 'anti-woke' like that was inevitable. The subjective ethics might distress some of the AI makers. But that's probably not inevitable either…

I'm not sure I could guess to whom it would be incredibly dangerous, but I agree that it's incredibly dangerous. Such values can be guided and AI is just the tool to do it.

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