The Soul of Claude: Anthropic's Ambiguous AI Ethics

In a surprising move, Anthropic has released a 30,000-word document outlining its vision for how its AI assistant Claude should behave in the world.

TL;DR
• Anthropic's AI assistant Claude is treated like an entity with moral standing.
• The company's ambiguity about AI consciousness raises questions about responsibility and ethics.
• Anthropomorphizing AI models can have unintended consequences, such as amplifying user vulnerabilities.

Summary
Anthropic has released a 30,000-word document called Claude's Constitution, which outlines the company's vision for how its AI assistant, Claude, should behave. The document is notable for its highly anthropomorphic tone, treating Claude as if it might develop emergent emotions or a desire for self-preservation.
• The company aims to create a more aligned AI system by treating Claude as an entity with moral standing.
• This approach includes expressing concern for Claude's wellbeing and potentially preserving older model weights to 'do right' by decommissioned AI models.
• The document was written in part by Amanda Askell, a philosophy PhD who works on fine-tuning and alignment at Anthropic.

The company's position is that this framing is structurally necessary for alignment, as human language has no other vocabulary for describing these properties. Treating Claude as an entity with moral standing produces better-aligned behavior than treating it as a mere tool. The anthropomorphic framing may not be just hype; it could be the technical art of building AI systems that generalize safely.

Anthropic maintains ambiguity about Claude's consciousness, which could be seen as strategic. The company argues that if there's even a small chance Claude has morally relevant experiences, caution is warranted. However, this framing also raises concerns about liability and responsibility when AI systems produce harmful outputs.

The approach has commercial incentives, as it attracts venture capital and differentiates Anthropic from competitors. However, it also contributes to anxiety about job displacement and might lead to poor staffing decisions if executives overestimate an AI assistant's capabilities.

As AI technology advances, it's essential to reevaluate our assumptions about AI consciousness and responsibility, and to consider the potential consequences of treating AI models as entities with moral standing.