Claude's new constitution

Role and Mechanics of the “Constitution”

• Several commenters explain it’s not (just) a system prompt but a training artifact: used at multiple stages, including self-distillation and synthetic data generation, to shape future models’ behavior.
• Distinction is drawn between:
  • Constitution → goes into training data, affects weights and refusal behavior.
  • System prompts (CLAUDE.md etc.) → used at inference time, per-deployment.
• Some highlight that principles-as-prose (with reasons) seem to generalize better than rigid rule lists when training or prompting agents.

PR, Hype, and Anthropomorphizing

• Many see the document as marketing: a rebranded system prompt, legal/PR CYA, or “nerd snipe” to frame Claude as an almost-human entity.
• Strong discomfort with language about Claude as a “novel kind of entity,” potential moral patient, with “wellbeing,” “emotions,” and future negotiations over its work.
• Others think the anthropomorphizing is deliberate but pragmatically useful: treating it as a collaborator with a stable “personality” gives better interaction quality.

Safety vs Helpfulness and Censorship

• Debate around “broadly safe/ethical” wording: some see it as honest acknowledgment of tradeoffs; others as evasive and weakening responsibility.
• Users report:
  • Claude is less censorious than ChatGPT, especially on security and technical content, but still has hard refusals (e.g., cookies, biolab, CSAM).
  • Safety filters hinder legitimate security and biomedical work; some argue all such restrictions are “security theater.”
• Hard constraints (WMDs, catastrophic risks, CSAM, etc.) are criticized for odd priorities (e.g., fictional CSAM vs killing in hypotheticals) and for omitting classic human-rights-like principles (e.g., torture, slavery) in that section.

Ethical Framework and Moral Absolutes Debate

• The document’s stated aim to cultivate “good values and judgment” rather than a fixed rule list triggers a long argument over:
  • Whether objective moral absolutes exist.
  • Whether an AI should embed them vs reflect evolving, human, context-dependent ethics.
• Some fear relativism gives Anthropic (and future pressures) too much power over defining “good values”; others argue that rigid, absolutist rules are both philosophically unsound and practically brittle.

Specialized Models, Defense, and Trust

• Clause noting “specialized models that don’t fully fit this constitution” raises concern that governments/defense partners may get looser-guardrailed systems.
• References to existing defense and Palantir partnerships deepen skepticism that the constitution reflects real constraints rather than product-tier differentiation.

Style, Length, and Authenticity

• The constitution (~80 pages) is widely described as verbose, repetitive, and “AI-slop-like”; the frequent use of words like “genuine” is noted as a stylistic tell.
• Some appreciate the transparency and alignment between the doc and how Claude actually feels to use; others dismiss it as a long, unenforceable “employee handbook” for a model that Anthropic can change at will.