Stephen Downes

When I read Anthopic's new 'soul document' (84 page PDF), more properly called its 'constitution', I reflected on how this would compare to an account of ethics intended for a human.I wonder how many people, for example, subscribe to this: "We don't want to assume any particular account of ethics, but rather to treat ethics as an open intellectual domain that we are mutually discovering...  Our intention is for Claude to approach ethics nondogmatically, treating moral questions with the same interest, rigor, and humility that we would want to apply to empirical claims about the world." In his discussion Simon Willison comments, in the "list of external contributors who helped review the document... I was intrigued to note that two of the fifteen listed names are Catholic members of the clergy." I also notice that 'janus' contributed, which is a bit of a puzzle to me. IYKYK I guess, and IDK. Carlo Iacono compares the teaching of Claude to the teaching of children and opines, "If Claude should maintain human oversight because it cannot verify its own alignment, what does this imply about human alignment? We also cannot step outside our values to confirm they are good." I think people will be studying this and similar questions for a long time.