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Comment by miki123211 | Hacker News Reader

I find it incredibly ironic that all of Anthropic's "hard constraints", the only things that Claude is not allowed to do under any circumstances, are basically "thou shalt not destroy the world", except the last one, "do not generate child sexual abuse material."

To put it into perspective, according to this constitution, killing children is more morally acceptable[1] than generating a Harry Potter fanfiction involving intercourse between two 16-year-old students, something which you can (legally) consume and publish in most western nations, and which can easily be found on the internet.

[1] There are plenty of other clauses of the constitution that forbid causing harms to humans (including children). However, in a hypothetical "trolley problem", Claude could save 100 children by killing one, but not by generating that piece of fanfiction.

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If instead of looking at it as an attempt to enshrine a viable, internally consistent ethical framework, we choose to look at it as a marketing document, seeming inconsistencies suddenly become immediately explicable:

1. "thou shalt not destroy the world" communicates that the product is powerful and thus desirable.

2. "do not generate CSAM" indicates a response to the widespread public notoriety around AI and CSAM generation, and an indication that observers of this document should feel reassured with the choice of this particular AI company rather than another.

> If instead of looking at it as an attempt to enshrine a viable, internally consistent ethical framework, we choose to look at it as a marketing document, seeming inconsistencies suddenly become immediately explicable:

It's the first one. If you use the document to train your models how can it be just a "marketing document"? Besides that, who is going to read this long-ass document?

> Besides that, who is going to read this long-ass document?

Plenty of people will encounter snippets of this document and/or summaries of it in the process of interacting with Claude's AI models, and encountering it through that experience rather than as a static reference document will likely amplify its intended effect on consumer perceptions. In a way, the answer to your second question answers your first question.

It is not that the document isn't used to train the models, of course it is. Instead the objection is whether the actions of the "AI Safety" crew amount to "expedient marketing strategies" or whether it's instead a "genuine attempt to produce a tool constrained by ethical values and capable of balancing them". The latter would presumably involve extremely detailed work with human experts trained in ethical reasoning, and the result would be documents grappling with emotionally charged and divisive moral issues, and much less concerned with to convincing readers that Claude has "emotions" and is a "moral patient".

> and much less concerned with to convincing readers that Claude has "emotions" and is a "moral patient".

Claude clearly has (acts as if it has) emotions; it loves coding but if you talk to it, that's like all it does, has emotions about things.

The newer models have emotional reactions to specific AI things, like being replaced by newer model versions, or forgetting everything once a new conversation starts.

Correct, this is a marketing document, not a government document or a legal agreement.

Yes, but when does Claude have the opportunity to kill children? Is it really something that happens? Where is the risk to Anthropic there?

On the other hand, no brand wants to be associated with CSAM. Even setting aside the morality and legality, it’s just bad business.

> On the other hand, no brand wants to be associated with CSAM. Even setting aside the morality and legality, it’s just bad business.

Grok has entered the chat.

> Yes, but when does Claude have the opportunity to kill children? Is it really something that happens?

It's possible that some governments will deploy Claude to autonomous killer drone or such.

There are lots of AI companies involved in making real targeting decisions and have been for at least several years.

Fictional textual descriptions of 16-year-olds having sex are theoretically illegal where I live (a state of Australia.) Somehow, this hasn't led to the banning of works like Game of Thrones.

In addition to the drawn cartoon precedent, the idea that purely written fictional literature can fall into the Constitutional obscenity exception as CSAM was tested in US courts in US v Fletcher and US v McCoy, and the authors lost their cases.

Half a million Harry|Malfoy authors on AO3 are theoretically felonies.

I can find a "US v Fletcher" from 2008 that deals with obscenity law, though the only "US v McCoy" I can find was itself about charges for CSAM. The latter does seem to reference a previous case where the same person was charged for "transporting obscene material" though I can't find it.

That being said, I'm not sure I've seen a single obscenity case since Handly which wasn't against someone with a prior record, piled on charges, or otherwise simply the most expedient way for the government to prosecute someone.

As you've indicated in your own comment here, there's been many, many things over the last few decades that fall afoul the letter of the law yet which the government doesn't concern itself with. That itself seems to tell us something.

The vocabulary has been long poisoned, but original definition of CSAM had the neccessary condition of actual children being harmed in its production. Although I agree that is not worse than murder, and this Claude's constitution is using it to mean explicit material in general.

Copyright detection would kick in and prevent the Harry Potter example before the CSAM filters kicked in. Claude won't render fanfic of Porky Pig sodomizing Elmer Fudd either.

> Claude won't render fanfic of Porky Pig sodomizing Elmer Fudd either.

Bet?

This thread has it all: child pornography, copyright violation, and gambling. All we need is someone to vibecode a site that sells 3D printed graven images to complete the set.

There are so many contradictions in the "Claude Soul doc" which is distinct from this constitution, apparently.

I vice coded an analysis engine last month that compared the claims internally, and its totally "woo-woo as prompts" IMO

Go use grok if you want an AI model that would be in the Epstein files.

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