LessWrong posts by zvi

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is back with another extended essay, The Adolescence of Technology.

This is the follow up to his previous essay Machines of Loving Grace. In MoLG, Dario talked about some of the upsides of AI. Here he talks about the dangers, and the need to minimize them while maximizing the benefits.

In many aspects this was a good essay. Overall it is a mild positive update on Anthropic. It was entirely consistent with his previous statements and work.

I believe the target is someone familiar with the basics, but who hasn’t thought that much about any of this and is willing to listen given the source. For that audience, there are a lot of good bits. For the rest of us, it was good to affirm his positions.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t major problems, especially with its treatment of those more worried, and its failure to present stronger calls to action.

He is at his weakest when he is criticising those more worried than he is. In some cases the description of those positions is on the level of a clear strawman. The central message is, ‘yes this might kill [...]
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Outline:
(02:22) Blame The Imperfect
(08:58) Anthropic's Term Is 'Powerful AI'
(09:33) Dario Doubles Down on Dates of Dazzling Datacenter Daemons
(10:27) How You Gonna Keep Em Down On The Server Farm
(15:04) If He Wanted To, He Would Have
(15:15) So Will He Want To?
(22:22) The Balance of Power
(24:29) Defenses of Autonomy
(29:28) Weapon of Mass Destruction
(31:48) Defenses Against Biological Attacks
(34:54) One Model To Rule Them All
(38:06) Defenses Against Autocracy
(41:11) They Took Our Jobs
(44:14) Don't Let Them Take Our Jobs
(46:18) Economic Concentrations of Power
(48:16) Unknown Unknowns
(50:24) Oh Well Back To Racing
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First published:

January 30th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dho4JQytfHWXtTvkt/on-the-adolescence-of-technology

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

This was Anthropic Vision week where at DWATV, which caused things to fall a bit behind on other fronts even within AI. Several topics are getting pushed forward, as the Christmas lull appears to be over.

Upcoming schedule: Friday will cover Dario's essay The Adolescence of Technology. Monday will cover Kimi K2.5, which is potentially a big deal. Tuesday is scheduled to be Claude Code #4. I’ve also pushed discussions of the question of the automation of AI R&D, or When AI Builds AI, to a future post, when there is a slot for that.

So get your reactions to all of those in by then, including in the comments to today's post, and I’ll consider them for incorporation.

Table of Contents


Language Models Offer Mundane Utility. Code is better without coding.

Overcoming Bias. LLMs continue to share the standard human biases.

Huh, Upgrades. Gemini side panels in Chrome, Claude interactive work tools.

On Your Marks. FrontierMath: Open Problems benchmark. You score zero.

Choose Your Fighter. Gemini tools struggle, some find Claude uncooperative.

Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon. Hallucination hallucinations.

Cybersecurity On Alert. OpenAI prepares to trigger High danger [...]
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Outline:
(00:55) Language Models Offer Mundane Utility
(02:30) Overcoming Bias
(03:01) Huh, Upgrades
(04:53) On Your Marks
(05:15) Choose Your Fighter
(09:53) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon
(12:57) Cybersecurity On Alert
(15:28) Fun With Media Generation
(16:22) You Drive Me Crazy
(21:51) They Took Our Jobs
(22:19) Get Involved
(22:48) Introducing
(24:11) In Other AI News
(28:21) Show Me the Money
(30:58) Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble
(38:45) Quiet Speculations
(42:39) Don't Be All Thumbs
(43:52) The First Step Is Admitting You Have a Problem
(49:34) Quickly, There's No Time
(53:39) The Quest for Sane Regulations
(57:55) Those Really Were Interesting Times
(01:02:18) Chip City
(01:04:35) The Week in Audio
(01:07:24) Rhetorical Innovation
(01:14:55) Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult
(01:15:46) The Power Of Disempowerment
(01:19:14) The Lighter Side
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First published:

January 29th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/bSQagZoSLdQKnS5zF/ai-153-living-documents

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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The first post in this series looked at the structure of Claude's Constitution.

The second post in this series looked at its ethical framework.

This final post deals with conflicts and open problems, starting with the first question one asks about any constitution. How and when will it be amended?

There are also several specific questions. How do you address claims of authority, jailbreaks and prompt injections? What about special cases like suicide risk? How do you take Anthropic's interests into account in an integrated and virtuous way? What about our jobs?

Not everyone loved the Constitution. There are twin central objections, that it either:


Is absurd and isn’t necessary, you people are crazy, OR

That it doesn’t go far enough and how dare you, sir. Given everything here, how does Anthropic justify its actions overall?

The most important question is whether it will work, and only sometimes do you get to respond, ‘compared to what alternative?’

Post image, as chosen and imagined by Claude Opus 4.5

Amending The Constitution

The power of the United States Constitution lies in our respect for it, our willingness to put it [...]
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Outline:
(01:30) Amending The Constitution
(03:45) Details Matter
(05:09) WASTED?
(07:40) Narrow Versus Broad
(09:00) Suicide Risk As A Special Case
(10:36) Careful, Icarus
(11:19) Beware Unreliable Sources and Prompt Injections
(12:15) Think Step By Step
(12:50) This Must Be Some Strange Use Of The Word Safe I Wasn't Previously Aware Of
(16:26) They Took Our Jobs
(20:08) One Man Cannot Serve Two Masters
(24:29) Claude's Nature
(30:14) Look What You Made Me Do
(32:32) Open Problems
(36:40) Three Reactions and Twin Objections
(36:57) Those Saying This Is Unnecessary
(38:05) Those Saying This Is Insufficient
(39:56) Those Saying This Is Unsustainable
(43:12) We Continue
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First published:

January 28th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vFAJxua3Qc6S8MbqG/open-problems-with-claude-s-constitution

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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This is the second part of my three part series on the Claude Constitution.

Part one outlined the structure of the Constitution.

Part two, this post, covers the virtue ethics framework that is at the center of it all, and why this is a wise approach.

Part three will cover particular areas of conflict and potential improvement.

One note on part 1 is that various people replied to point out that when asked in a different context, Claude will not treat FDT (functional decision theory) as obviously correct. Claude will instead say it is not obvious which is the correct decision theory. The context in which I asked the question was insufficiently neutral, including my identify and memories, and I likely based the answer.

Claude clearly does believe in FDT in a functional way, in the sense that it correctly answers various questions where FDT gets the right answer and one or both of the classical academic decision theories, EDT and CDT, get the wrong one. And Claude notices that FDT is more useful as a guide for action, if asked in an open ended way. I think Claude fundamentally ‘gets it.’

That [...]
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Outline:
(01:47) Ethics
(04:39) Honesty
(14:03) Mostly Harmless
(17:58) What Is Good In Life?
(20:37) Hard Constraints
(23:20) The Good Judgment Project
(29:11) Coherence Matters
(31:59) Their Final Word
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First published:

January 27th, 2026


Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/w5Rdn6YK5ETqjPEAr/the-claude-constitution-s-ethical-framework

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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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.