"Anthropic has completely overhauled the "Claude constitution", a document that sets out the ethical parameters governing its AI model's reasoning and behavior. Launched at the World Economic Forum's Davos Summit, the new constitution's principles are that Claude should be "broadly safe" (not undermining human oversight), "Broadly ethical" (honest, avoiding inappropriate, dangerous, or harmful actions), "genuinely helpful" (benefitting its users), as well as being "compliant with Anthropic's guidelines"."
"While not completely abandoning those sources, the 2026 Claude constitution moves away from the focus on "standalone principles" in favor of a more philosophical approach based on understanding not simply what is important, but why. "We've come to believe that a different approach is necessary. If we want models to exercise good judgment across a wide range of novel situations, they need to be able to generalize - to apply broad principles rather than mechanically following specific rules,""
Anthropic republished a substantially expanded Claude constitution and licensed it under a Creative Commons deed to allow other LLMs to benefit. The constitution establishes principles that Claude should be broadly safe, broadly ethical, genuinely helpful, and compliant with Anthropic's guidelines. The document is already integrated into Claude's model training and shapes its reasoning. The 2026 version shifts from checklist-style rules toward a philosophical approach that emphasizes understanding why principles matter and generalizing ethical judgment across novel situations. The rewrite aims to enable deeper reasoning about values such as privacy and grows to 84 pages and 23,000 words, up from 2,700 words in 2023.
Read at Computerworld
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