How constitutional AI helps cultivate good human values in Anthropic's AI tools

Anthropic's staff philosopher discusses the importance of teaching ethics to AI

Amanda Askell's work focuses on the behavior and values reflected in Claude, the company's AI chatbot, and how its character can better align with how the "ideal person" would act in Claude's position. She also emphasizes the importance of humans being ethical in their interactions with current models, from which future ones will be built.

How Anthropic's experimental corporate structure incentivizes safe AI development

As Anthropic is a public benefit corporation, its board is tasked with making sure that AI tools are developed to help people and society thrive. Members of its Long Term Benefit Trust hold no equity in the company, but make up a majority of the board and can act to maintain Anthropic's public benefit purpose.

How Anthropic's frontier red team assesses the dangers of its AI tools

The team of researchers deliberately attempts to breach the safeguards in Claude to determine whether the large language model can be used to commit cyberattacks, develop biological weapons, or enable other harmful behavior. Unlike many other red teams, Anthropic shares its findings and how it resolved them publicly to help build transparency and credibility.

The history of Anthropic began with a break from OpenAI over safety concerns

Founded by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic envisioned guardrails in its AI products from the outset to minimize the potential risk for businesses considering using its Claude products. The strategy has contributed to a tenfold increase in revenue over three consecutive years, and its business customer base has grown from under 1,000 to over 300,000 in two years.

The Anthropic Economic Index shows AI adoption is highest in computer science roles

The analysis of millions of anonymized conversations on Claude aims to reveal how AI is being integrated into real-world tasks across the labor market. As of November 2025, 52% of conversations were classified as involving enhancing existing work products, while 45% involved using Claude for automation.

AI tools are trained on human-created data containing implicit and explicit biases

Because AI tools reflect patterns in their training data, their outputs may reinforce existing societal biases—especially racial ones—rather than offering neutral or fair ones. Adequate training is necessary to undermine these biases whenever new data is incorporated.

Court documents reveal how Anthropic destroyed millions of books to build its AI models

Anthropic cut the bindings from purchased books and discarded them after scanning to rapidly collect high-quality text at low cost for training Claude. This, despite hiring the former head of partnerships for the Google Books project, which nondestructively scanned millions of books borrowed from libraries before returning them.

Understanding how Claude Code and other AI coding agents function

Under human oversight, a supervising large language model interprets user tasks and delegates work to subordinate LLMs, which can generate code, fix bugs, and run tests, often most effectively for proofs of concept. Incremental backups and versioning are crucial when using such agents, which can lose details during their work as a result of compressing context history to work around memory limitations.

Agentic AI systems can proactively achieve user goals without user direction

Unlike large language models, which do not take follow-up actions after generating their output, agentic AI uses an initial prompt to take multiple steps, learn from its environment and outcomes, and continue working without follow-up human prompting.

The growing role of AI in journalism

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more widely available, journalism must adapt and establish ethical norms for how the technology is used. This report from the Center for News, Technology & Innovation looks at the issue from every angle, including legal considerations, potential biases in datasets, and the speed at which AI capabilities are changing. It also includes links to recent studies on the use of AI in journalism.

Sam Altman acknowledges the fears around creativity, copyright, and misuse of AI

In 2022, OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, popularized the use of large language models with the release of ChatGPT. He has emphasized the importance of involving society in shaping AI’s safety frameworks before models begin to act independently online.

What does it mean for AI to "understand" something?

This Quanta article discusses how programmers are working to create a reliable test for the depth and extent of the knowledge of machines. What does AI know and how does it know it, if it knows anything at all? There's been progress, but it hasn't been easy. Even humans can still be fooled some of the time.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

AI-generated avatars allow users to create deepfakes in real time

Synthetic media tools can map voices and faces to make individuals appear as someone else. Although they open the door to new opportunities in immersive education and entertainment, they also raise concerns about the misuse of personal identity.

You can draft a will designed to block AI resurrection—but the request may be ignored

Ars Technica spoke with legal experts about how—and if—people could design their wills to prevent AI resurrection. Though this is not yet a common request, one lawyer suggested that people worried about living on in an AI format can draft a power of attorney and a will that prevents those in charge of one's estate from submitting any texts, voice, image, writings, or other personal information to any AI tools.

Is using VR as a tool to enhance empathy ethical?

This research paper explores whether virtual reality should be used as a tool for improving our moral character — and, if not, what ethical alternatives could be.

Meet the investor running his life with AI

Daniel Ha is a venture capitalist who built a suite of AI agents to boost his productivity, both professionally and personally. At his VC firm, a troupe of agents gathers data on startups and analyzes it from competing perspectives to produce a confidence score. When his dad was diagnosed with cancer, Ha used an oncology-trained AI to help him understand the condition.

Artificial intelligence may improve organ donation systems—and even organ health

Mayo Clinic transplant experts suggest that artificial intelligence could potentially improve organ donation systems in several ways, including better identifying patients most at risk for organ rejection, enhancing donor-recipient matching, and helping to avoid organ transplant needs by identifying health issues earlier.

The Oscars now prohibit AI-generated acting and writing

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences added language to its rules and eligibility requirements stating that only roles "demonstrably performed by humans with their consent" and screenplays "human-authored" would be eligible for awards.

What are the universal human rights?

This video outlines what basic human rights are, who gets to pick them, who enforces them, and how. The basic idea of human rights states that each of us is entitled to the same basic rights and freedoms, no matter who we are or where we are born....

There’s an artificial intelligence model trained on bankruptcy law

Although it's designed for lawyers, the tool is able to help everyday browsers synthesize important cases and point users to relevant documents about them. One sample using it asks Chatlaw to explain the significance of a recent case and then to define relevant terminology.

Some scientists propose AI-powered satellites to monitor nuclear weapons in place of arms control treaties

With the New START treaty expired, researchers at the Federation of American Scientists have proposed using satellites and AI to remotely verify nuclear arsenals—replacing the onsite inspections that once built trust between the US and Russia during the Cold War.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

The history of torturing robots

When machines fail, its easy to get mad and even give them a good kick. But as humanoid robots become more sophisticated, the degree to which people abuse them has shifted, depending on how much emotion the robot expresses. Studies revealed when robots were programmed to cry during distress, participants felt empathy. Learn more about the history of human abuse of robots here.

The US Constitution has influenced rights and governments worldwide

This interactive tool from the National Constitution Center allows you to compare constitutional rights globally, highlighting which countries have adopted protections similar to those in the US Constitution—and how shared principles manifest in different legal forms around the world.

The Founders placed the pursuit of happiness at the center of good governance

This podcast explores the central place happiness played in the American founding, highlighting the influence of Greek and Roman moral philosophy on the founders’ constitutional ideas.

Hear Eleanor Roosevelt speak about human rights

On International Human Rights Day, Roosevelt addressed a TV audience to explain the importance of the Declaration of Human Rights. She discusses her work and plans to spread information about the United Nations' efforts.

When you complete a CAPTCHA on a website to prove you are human, you may be unknowingly training algorithms for self-driving cars, whose systems require training data to help identify crosswalks, bicycles, and other outdoor objects.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Astronauts have repaired genetic damage in space using CRISPR—a molecular tool that can make precise changes to DNA and is used in single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

In recent years a child anxiety expert has created and tested a novel phobia and anxiety treatment approach for children, focused on changing how parents respond to the fears.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Cultural norms about how to handle the bodies of loved ones in communities in West Africa have hampered Ebola responses.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.