Claude's Constitution is an extraordinary document, and will be this week's focus.

Its aim is nothing less than helping humanity transition to a world of powerful AI (also known variously as AGI, transformative AI, superintelligence or my current name of choice ‘sufficiently advanced AI.’

The constitution is written with Claude in mind, although it is highly readable for humans, and would serve as a fine employee manual or general set of advice for a human, modulo the parts that wouldn’t make sense in context.

This link goes to the full text of Claude's constitution, the official version of what we previously were calling its ‘soul document.’ As they note at the end, the document can and will be revised over time. It was driven by Amanda Askell and Joe Carlsmith.

There are places it can be improved. I do not believe this approach alone is sufficient for the challenges ahead. But it is by far the best approach being tried today and can hopefully enable the next level. Overall this is an amazingly great document, and we’ve all seen the results.

I’ll be covering the Constitution in three parts.

This first post is [...]

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Outline:

(01:39) How Anthropic Describes The Constitution

(03:22) Decision Theory And Acausal Trade

(06:35) AI and Alignment Are The Final Exam Of Philosophy

(10:32) Values and Judgment Versus Rules

(16:04) The Fourth Framework

(17:41) Core Values

(19:51) The Three Principles

(23:39) Help Is On The Way

(27:03) What Was I Made For?

(30:22) Do The Right Thing

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First published:
January 26th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ArNGbGfki7MNMnfGD/claude-s-constitutional-structure

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Claude’s Constitutional Structure” by Zvi

LessWrong (30+ Karma)