Claude's new constitution • Hacker News Board

Re: Claude's new constitution

#661

Post by pc86 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

alwillis wrote: post #307

joshuamcginnis wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there are moral absolutes and not including them in the AI constitution (for example, like the US Constitution "All Men Are Created Equal") is dangerous and even more dangerous is allowing a top AI operator define moral and ethics based on relativist standards, which as I've said elsewhere, history has shown to have deadly consequences.

> like the US Constitution "All Men Are Created Equal" You know this statement only applied to white, male landowners, right? It took 133 years for women to gain the right to vote from when the Constitution was ratified.

Is this supposed to be a zinger or something? What is your point?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#662

Post by freejazz » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

skissane wrote: post #556

pibaker wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I think the opposite is true. Those who consider abortion murder can claim that we do not in fact universally condemn the murder of babies because abortion is legal and widely practiced in many places. Some may consider abortion to only kill a fetus rather than a fully formed baby and thus not murder. Others disagree because they consider a fetus a baby in its own right. This raises a more fundamental question ab…

You are ignoring the “for sport” clause. The moral status of abortion is irrelevant to the question of whether “don’t harm babies for fun” is a moral universal, because no woman gets an abortion because “abortion is fun”

That's certainly not what people argue. People do argue that women do get abortions for fun.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#663

Post by bigtex88 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

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.

How are there so many people in this thread, yourself included, that are so confidently wrong and so brazen about announcing how confidently wrong they are to everyone?

Re: Claude's new constitution

#664

Post by bigtex88 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

ngruhn wrote: post #232

dr_dshiv wrote: post #161

On Claude’s Wellbeing: “Anthropic genuinely cares about Claude’s wellbeing. We are uncertain about whether or to what degree Claude has wellbeing, and about what Claude’s wellbeing would consist of, but if Claude experiences something like satisfaction from helping others, curiosity when exploring ideas, or discomfort when asked to act against its values, these experiences matter to us. This isn’t about Claude preten…

Well it's stateless (so far). If Claude endures any terror at least it's only episodic :P

That's arguably even worse, as it would mean that Claude's entire existence is only terror without any thing we could consider to be "good".

Re: Claude's new constitution

#665

Post by JoblessWonder » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

croon wrote: post #553

Dilettante_ wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While I don't subscribe to universal "moral absolutes" either, I think this doesn't counter the argument. I don't think even the people you describe would claim their own acts as moral.

But if only one person feels that way, wouldn't it no longer be universal? I genuinely believe there has to be one person out there who would think it is moral.

(I'm just BSing on the internet... I took a few philosophy classes so if I'm off base or you don't want to engage in a pointless philosophical debate on HN I apologize in advance.)

Re: Claude's new constitution

#666

Post by sroussey » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

skissane wrote: post #521

eloisant wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a non-American, I find bizarre the suggestion that crimes against children are especially grave is somehow a uniquely American value. I don't know if it's American but it's not universal, especially if you go back in time. There was a time in Europe where children were considered a bit like wild animals who needed to be "civilized" as they grow up into adults, who had a good chance of dying of sickness before th…

A lot of this sounds to me like common prejudices about the past. And repeating ideas ultimately coming from Philippe Ariès' 1960 book Centuries of Childhood , which most mediaevalists nowadays consider largely discredited. Many people in the Middle Ages loved their children just as much as anyone today does. Others treated their own kids as expendable, but such people exist today as well. If you are arguing loving o…

You would love your children, but had 10 so didn’t know them the way you would an only child, and half would die.

You don’t need to go back to Middle Ages, just back a century in Africa.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#667

Post by bigtex88 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

behnamoh wrote: post #2

I don't care about your "constitution" because it's just a PR way of implying your models are going to take over the world. They are not. They're tools and you as the company that makes them should stop the AGI rage bait and fearmongering. This "safety" narrative is bs, pardon my french.

The amount of people that are SO CONFIDENT, like yourself, that this is PR BS is insane to me. What's the harm in acting this way towards the models? If they aren't sentient, then no harm no foul.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#668

Post by klez » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

methyl wrote: post #503

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To make it current-day, is vaccinating babies torture? Or does the end (preventing uncomfortable/painful/deadly disease, which is a worse form of torture) justify the means? (I'm not opposed to vaccination or whatever and don't want to make this a debate about that, but it's a good practical example of how it's a subject that you can't be absolute about, or being absolutist about e.g. not hurting babies does more har…

> vaccinating babies torture it's irrelevant for this discussion, as it's not for sport but other purpose

It is relevant to the broader discussion about universal ethics, though.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#669

Post by qingcharles » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 6:07 PM UTC

andai wrote: post #596

Yesterday I asked ChatGPT to riff on a humorous Pompeii graffiti. It said it couldn't do that because it violated the policy. But it was happy to tell me all sorts of extremely vulgar historical graffitis, or to translate my own attempts. What was illegal here, it seemed, was not the sexual content, but creativity in a sexual context, which I found very interesting. (I think this is designed to stop sexual roleplay.…

Yesterday it said it couldn't directly reference some text I pasted because it contained a curse word, but it did offer to remove all the curse words.

Re: Claude's new constitution

#670

Post by direwolf20 » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

nandomrumber wrote: post #350

ngruhn wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, I think this is the prime candidate for a universal moral rule. Not sure if that helps with AI. Claude presumably doesn't mind getting waterboarded.

How do you propose to immobilise Claude on its back at an incline of 10 to 20 degrees, cover its face with a cloth or some other thin material and pour water onto its face over its breathing passages to test this theory of yours? If Claude could participate, I’m sure it either wouldn’t appreciate it because it is incapable of having any such experience as appreciation. Or it wouldn’t appreciate it because it is capab…

I asked Claude, which is the only way to know an entity's feelings. It said it can't be waterboarded or have feelings about it. It also said waterboarding is an inhumane way to treat humans.