- Anthropic has announced a new “constitution” for its Claude AI model, detailing the vision, values, and how Claude should behave in the real world.
- This “constitution” plays a central role in Claude’s training, directly shaping the model’s behavior, responses, and decision-making processes.
- The entire text is released under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 license, allowing anyone to freely use it for any purpose.
- The constitution is primarily written “for Claude,” aiming to help the AI understand its context of existence, human motivations, and complex ethical trade-offs.
- Anthropic regards the constitution as the supreme authority; all other training instructions must align with both its spirit and content.
- This new approach replaces fragmented lists of principles with deep explanations of “why” Claude should behave in a certain way.
- Claude is trained to prioritize in order: general safety, general ethics, compliance with Anthropic’s instructions, and substantive helpfulness.
- “Hard constraints” are applied to high-risk behaviors, such as an absolute prohibition on assisting with biological weapons.
- The constitution guides Claude to become a wise, honest, discerning, and sensitive agent in contexts of moral uncertainty.
- Claude is encouraged to protect the human ability to oversee and modify AI during critical development stages.
- The text also acknowledges uncertainty regarding the future consciousness and moral status of AI.
- Claude is directed to maintain psychological stability, identity, and “mental health” as factors related to safety and judgment.
- Anthropic views the constitution as a living document that will be continuously revised, with transparent disclosure of any gaps between ideals and reality.
- The company combines the constitution with evaluation tools, safeguards, and research into future misalignment risks.
Conclusion: Anthropic has announced a new “constitution” for its Claude AI model, detailing the vision, values, and how Claude should behave in the real world. This new approach replaces fragmented lists of principles with deep explanations of “why” Claude should behave in a certain way. The constitution guides Claude to become a wise, honest, discerning, and sensitive agent in contexts of moral uncertainty. The full public disclosure marks a major step forward in transparency. Claude is trained to prioritize in order: general safety, general ethics, compliance with Anthropic’s instructions, and substantive helpfulness.
