Claude's Strange Constitution

Anthropic is advancing legally questionable theories of AI personality to support an exceptionalist system for AI and weaker accountability frameworks for AI companies | Edition #268

“Cabinet of Curiosities” by Domenico Remps, 1690s (oil on canvas, modified)

Three days ago, Anthropic launched Claude's new constitution. I did not even know Claude had an old constitution, so I checked it out.

While reading it, I was shocked at first.

Anthropic soaked the document in heavy doses of anthropomorphism and presented a pretentious, controversial, and legally inaccurate approach to the nature and social role of an AI model.

This did not seem to match the company's ambition to appear aligned with responsible AI principles and the mainstream AI governance discourse, as well as its interest in reigning over enterprise AI.

I was also surprised that this version of Claude's constitution received internal approval from the legal and PR teams for publication.

As I have written before, Anthropic has avoided social media drama and unproductive controversies. It has also seemed interested in legal compliance and ethical alignment. This has made them the favorite AI company of many lawyers and AI governance professionals I know.

Why would they risk their reputation publishing a document that will stir ‘AGI’ and ‘superintelligence’ rumors and provoke passionate negative reactions with sentences such as “Anthropic genuinely cares about Claude’s wellbeing”?

There is an AI race underway, and the people at Anthropic are very smart, so there must be a strategic reason to publish this document.

After thinking it through and watching the internet’s reaction to Claude’s new constitution (including some of the reactions to my teaser), I understood what is going on.

In a few words, under the guise of ‘full transparency,’ the company is advancing new, unpopular, and legally questionable theories of AI personality to support a parallel, weaker accountability framework for AI companies.

These theories of AI personality and the way Anthropic is framing them in Claude’s constitution fail to account for human rights, values, and societies, and they are being built into the company's AI model.

Strangely, their goal seems to be to create a higher-status, exceptionalist system for AI models and AI companies.

I do not think this is a good idea from an AI governance perspective, and I think it will backfire for Anthropic.

Let me explain to you how they are doing it: