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📜 Constitutional AI

Training AI systems to be helpful, harmless, and honest through self-critique

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What is Constitutional AI?

🎯 Overview

Constitutional AI (CAI) is an approach developed by Anthropic to train AI systems that are helpful, harmless, and honest. Instead of relying solely on human feedback (like RLHF), CAI uses a "constitution" – a set of principles the AI follows to critique and improve its own responses.

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Key Insight

CAI enables AI to self-improve by critiquing its responses against constitutional principles, reducing the need for extensive human labeling while maintaining alignment with human values.

🆚 CAI vs RLHF

RLHF (Traditional)

  • •Requires thousands of human labels
  • •Expensive and time-consuming
  • •Human biases in feedback
  • •Difficult to scale globally

Constitutional AI

  • •AI self-critiques using principles
  • •Scalable and efficient
  • •Transparent value alignment
  • •Principles are explicit and editable
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Helpful

Provides useful, relevant information to assist users effectively

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Harmless

Avoids harmful, dangerous, or unethical responses

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Honest

Acknowledges limitations and uncertainties truthfully

🎯 Why Constitutional AI?

1️⃣

Scalability

Reduces dependence on human labeling, allowing faster iteration

2️⃣

Transparency

Constitutional principles are explicit and can be audited or modified

3️⃣

Consistency

Same principles applied uniformly across all responses

4️⃣

Safety

Reduces harmful outputs through systematic self-critique