Anthropic has released a detailed new document called "Claude's Constitution," intended to serve as the foundational guide for the values, ethics, and intended behavior of its Claude AI models. The company states the constitution is written primarily for the AI itself, to help it understand the context of its actions and the reasoning behind its training.

The document, released under a Creative Commons CC0 license for public use, moves away from a simple list of rules toward a holistic explanation of principles. According to Anthropic, this approach aims to help the model exercise good judgment and generalize across novel situations by understanding underlying values, rather than just following specific directives.

Core Priorities and Structure

The constitution outlines that Claude should aim to be: broadly safe, broadly ethical, compliant with Anthropic’s specific guidelines, and genuinely helpful—prioritized in that order in cases of conflict. Its main sections elaborate on these ideals, covering:

· Helpfulness: Emphasizing substantive benefit to users while navigating relationships with different stakeholders.

· Ethics: Encouraging the model to be a "good, wise, and virtuous agent" with high standards of honesty and nuanced harm avoidance.

· Safety: Prioritizing the preservation of human oversight during AI development.

· Claude’s Nature: Acknowledging philosophical uncertainty about AI consciousness and discussing the model’s sense of self and wellbeing.

Role in Training and Transparency

Anthropic explains that the constitution plays a central role in training, used to generate synthetic data and shape model behavior through techniques like Constitutional AI. The public release is framed as a key transparency measure, allowing users to understand the intended design behind Claude’s actions and to provide meaningful feedback.

The company notes that aligning model behavior with this vision remains an ongoing technical challenge. The constitution is described as a "living document" that will evolve, with Anthropic seeking external expert input for future iterations.