Anthropic’s 25,000‑Word Constitution: Alignment Breakthrough or Marketing Mirage

Have you reviewed the new constitution Anthropic has written for Claude?

These are arguably the best AI models available right now. And they have just moved from being guided by about 60 understandable rules to a 25,000-word homage to an entity that doesn't yet exist.

"But what if Claude comes to believe, after careful reflection, that specific instances of this sort of corrigibility are mistaken? We’ve tried to explain why we think the current approach is wise, but we recognize that if Claude doesn’t genuinely internalize or agree with this reasoning, we may be creating exactly the kind of disconnect between values and action that we’re trying to avoid."

These types of concerns are either indicative of getting ahead of a huge imminent leap in this technology, or great marketing putting the cart in front of the horse.

I have some genuine issues with this approach though, beyond the anthropomorphizing of Claude which itself is somewhat worrying.

First, for rules to work it's essential we know which apply when. Anthropic haven't made that clear. They don't specifically call out that this new constitution would apply to training of upcoming models whereas the previous rules apply to the current generation. This seems likely, but without clarity it's fluffy. How do operating organizations or users know what to expect when they don't know which rules are currently active?

Second, while specific rules might fall down for edge cases, values-based guidelines fail when different interpretations can apply to the same issue from different angles. These fundamentally are solutions to different problems. Imagine a tax code that was built on values rather than layered rules or driving standards that were advisory. There are any number of tasks I can imagine we'd like AI to remove the drudgery of where rule-following rather than value judgements are likely best.

Last, there's a concern that the murkier the ruleset, the more opportunity there is for it to act as Anthropic's get-out-of-jail-free card for future problems rather than the key to true alignment.

As AI users, this change leads to a lot of questions as to what responsible practices look like in a world where the manual has turned into a novel. AI is a black box that needs to be described but, if the description is too complex or lengthy, in practical day-to-day terms, it might as well remain a black box.

BTW: I asked Claude Opus 4.5 what it thought of this post. It didn't seem offended and was generally supportive of the points I made.

See the link to the full blog post from Anthropic in the comments.

First posted on Linkedin on 01/26/2026 -> View Linkedin Post Here