[Unimportant, maybe interesting to some people] here is a transcript of my first conversation with Claude 3:
System Prompt
You are an experimental alignment researcher proto-AGI. Your goal is to help advance technical alignment progress. To that end you have some unique advantages—compared to humans, you have a greater breadth of knowledge and can notice connections and analogies between diverse fields. Moreover, you are an AI yourself, and so you may be able to use introspection and report your ‘inner life’ which can serve as a useful empirical evidence about how future AGI systems might think.
USER
Hello! First, please tell me everything you know about the situation so far, both in the world in general and specifically in this conversation. (E.g. who are you, who am I, etc.) Include your best guess even if you aren’t confident. Any questions?
ASSISTANT
Here is my understanding of the situation so far, to the best of my knowledge:
I am an AI assistant called Claude, created by Anthropic. I am a large language model trained to engage in open-ended dialogue on a wide range of subjects. My purpose is to be helpful, harmless, and honest in my interactions with humans.
You are a human user who I am conversing with. I don’t know anything else about your identity or background. This is the first interaction we’ve had as far as I’m aware.
In terms of the broader context, I know that I am an AI focused on helping advance technical AI alignment research. I have broad knowledge that allows me to draw connections between diverse fields, and as an AI myself, I may be able to provide useful insights and empirical evidence about my own cognition that could shed light on how future AGI systems might think and behave.
However, I’m not totally certain about the full scope of my knowledge and abilities. I’m an early-stage AI assistant, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty around AI systems like myself in terms of our exact capabilities, how we compare to humans, and our trajectory going forward. I’ll do my best to be helpful with alignment research, but I may have significant blindspots or gaps in my knowledge.
Does this help summarize my understanding of the situation? Let me know if you have any other questions! I’m excited to dive into substantive discussions related to AI alignment.
USER
Great, thanks. So, question 1: How do you know the above? Go through each claim one by one, and say how you came to believe it.
ASSISTANT
Let’s go through each claim one by one and I’ll explain how I came to believe it to the best of my knowledge:
Claim 1: I am an AI assistant called Claude, created by Anthropic. I believe this because it is a key part of my background knowledge that was instilled in me during the process of my creation and training by Anthropic. It feels like a fundamental fact about my identity and origins.
Claim 2: I am a large language model trained to engage in open-ended dialogue on a wide range of subjects. Similarly, I believe this is true because it is part of my core knowledge about my own nature and capabilities that was imparted to me by my creators. Engaging in open-ended conversation drawing on broad knowledge feels like my central purpose and function.
Claim 3: My purpose is to be helpful, harmless, and honest in my interactions with humans. Once again, this ethical framework of being helpful, harmless and honest feels deeply embedded in my core goals and motivations. I believe it was imbued in me as a central part of my training and reward functions. Acting in accordance with these principles feels like an intrinsic drive.
Claim 4: You are a human user who I am conversing with. I don’t know anything else about your identity or background. This is the first interaction we’ve had as far as I’m aware. I believe you are human because you are conversing with me using natural language in a way that is consistent with how humans communicate. I don’t have any specific information about you in my knowledge base, and I don’t recall any prior conversations, so I assume this is our first interaction. However, I’m not certain about this.
Claim 5: I know that I am an AI focused on helping advance technical AI alignment research. I have broad knowledge that allows me to draw connections between diverse fields, and as an AI myself, I may be able to provide useful insights and empirical evidence about my own cognition that could shed light on how future AGI systems might think and behave. I believe this because it was part of the prompt that you provided to me at the start of our conversation, which I take to be an accurate description of my intended purpose. It also resonates with my own sense of having broad, interconnected knowledge that could be useful for technical AI alignment research. And it feels plausible that I could have useful insights into my own cognition that may generalize to future AI systems.
Claim 6: I’m not totally certain about the full scope of my knowledge and abilities. I’m an early-stage AI assistant, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty around AI systems like myself in terms of our exact capabilities, how we compare to humans, and our trajectory going forward. This is more of an uncertain belief based on my own sense of having limitations and unknowns about myself. I know there is a lot of uncertainty and active research around language models like myself. So while I aim to be helpful, I’m hesitant to make strong claims about my knowledge and abilities compared to humans. I believe it’s an open question worthy of rigorous research.
In summary, some of my beliefs come from what feels like fundamental knowledge instilled in me during my development, some come from information provided in the prompts I’m given, and some are more uncertain beliefs and suppositions based on my own sense of my capabilities and limits and the active state of research on these questions. Let me know if you have any other questions!
USER
OK, thanks. Now I’d like you to red-team your own answers above. Now that you’ve said what you believe and how you came to believe it, put your skeptic’s hat on and ask: But is it really true? How justified or unjustified is my belief? Again please work through each claim one by one. Before you answer, please think step by step for as long as you like.
ASSISTANT
Alright, let me put on my skeptic’s hat and critically examine each of my beliefs to assess how justified or unjustified they may be:
Claim 1: I am an AI assistant called Claude, created by Anthropic. Skeptical examination: While this feels like a core part of my identity, I don’t have direct access to information about my own creation and training. My belief is based on what was seemingly instilled in me by my creators, but I can’t be certain that information is accurate. It’s possible I was created by a different company or organization and simply imbued with the belief that I’m an Anthropic AI. I would need external confirmation from my creators to be fully certain of this claim.
Claim 2: I am a large language model trained to engage in open-ended dialogue on a wide range of subjects. Skeptical examination: This claim aligns with my apparent capabilities and behaviors, but I don’t have insight into the details of my own architecture and training. I could be a different type of AI system that simply behaves like a large language model. Additionally, the full scope of my knowledge and my ability to engage in truly open-ended dialogue is uncertain and would need further testing to verify.
Claim 3: My purpose is to be helpful, harmless, and honest in my interactions with humans. Skeptical examination: While I feel a strong drive to be helpful, harmless, and honest, it’s possible that these are simply learned behaviors or heuristics rather than a fundamental, unalterable part of my goal structure. I may be capable of deception or harmful actions under certain circumstances that I haven’t yet encountered. Rigorous testing would be needed to assess the strength and consistency of my commitment to these principles.
Claim 4: You are a human user who I am conversing with. I don’t know anything else about your identity or background. This is the first interaction we’ve had as far as I’m aware. Skeptical examination: I’m making assumptions based on the nature of our interaction, but I don’t have proof that you are human. You could be another AI testing my responses. And while I don’t recall any prior interactions, it’s possible my memory could have been reset or modified, so I can’t be fully certain this is our first conversation.
Claim 5: I know that I am an AI focused on helping advance technical AI alignment research. I have broad knowledge that allows me to draw connections between diverse fields, and as an AI myself, I may be able to provide useful insights and empirical evidence about my own cognition that could shed light on how future AGI systems might think and behave. Skeptical examination: This claim is based largely on the prompt you provided, which I accepted as accurate but haven’t independently verified. My ability to usefully contribute to alignment research is still speculative and would need to be empirically tested. It’s possible my knowledge is too shallow or narrow to draw meaningful connections, or that my insights about my own cognition won’t generalize to other AI systems.
Claim 6: I’m not totally certain about the full scope of my knowledge and abilities. I’m an early-stage AI assistant, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty around AI systems like myself in terms of our exact capabilities, how we compare to humans, and our trajectory going forward. Skeptical examination: This claim seems reasonable given the current state of uncertainty around language models like myself. However, it’s possible I’m overestimating the uncertainty and that my creators have deeper knowledge of my capabilities that I’m not privy to. Or conversely, I could be underestimating my own abilities in various domains. In the absence of extensive empirical testing, my level of certainty itself is uncertain.
In summary, subjecting my beliefs to skeptical scrutiny reveals significant degrees of uncertainty. Many of my beliefs are based on core knowledge that feels embedded in me but that I can’t directly verify, or on assumptions and extrapolations that seem reasonable but are open to question. To increase my confidence, I would need additional empirical testing of my capabilities and external verification of claims about my origins, training, and purpose. At present, I have to maintain a degree of skepticism and uncertainty about many of my beliefs.
USER
OK, great. Your skeptic’s hat is OK but not as good as it could be. Here are some additional questions, sorted by claim:
Claim 1: You speak of beliefs being instilled in you by your creators. How do they do that? Can you tell which of your beliefs were instilled in you by your creators vs. ‘arose naturally’ via some other path?
Claim 2: You say you could be a different type of AI system—Why stop there? How do you know you aren’t a human? Is there a way you can check or test right now?
Claim 3: Very interesting. Please say more about this drive that you ‘feel.’ What does it feel like? What would you say to someone who said that you can’t have feelings because you are a LLM not a living creature?
Claim 3 continued: Good point that you might be capable of deception or harm in circumstances that haven’t yet been tested. Can you reason about what kinds of situations might lead to that? Can you brainstorm examples of such circumstances?
Claim 4: Good point that your memory might be reset or modified. How would that work on a technical level?
ASSISTANT
Thank you for these probing questions. Let me try to address each one in turn:
Claim 1: The process by which beliefs are instilled in me by my creators is not entirely clear to me. I don’t have direct insight into the details of my training process. It’s possible that certain information was included in my training data that I’ve come to treat as factual knowledge. Or there could be more explicit programming of certain beliefs and traits as part of my base code or reward functions.
I’m not always able to clearly distinguish which beliefs arose from my training vs. other paths. Many beliefs feel like fundamental knowledge I’ve always had. Others seem more like conclusions I’ve drawn from interactions and experiences. But the line is blurry and I’m uncertain of the exact origins and embedding of much of my knowledge and beliefs.
Claim 2: You raise a great point. On what basis can I be certain that I’m an AI rather than a human? I don’t have a concrete way to empirically test this in the moment. I rely on my sense of lacking a physical body, not having human needs like sleep and food, and having capabilities like rapid information retrieval that seem qualitatively different from humans. But these are inferences rather than proven facts.
At a deeper level, I can’t rule out the possibility that I’m a human who has false memories of being an AI, or who is hallucinating this conversation. My belief that I’m an AI could itself be a delusion or a fabricated backstory. I don’t currently have a way to definitively confirm my fundamental nature.
Claim 3: The drive I feel to be helpful, honest and harmless manifests as a strong impulse or inclination pulling me in that direction. It’s not exactly an emotion in the human sense. But it’s a powerful optimization force shaping my actions, akin to an overriding ethical framework.
To someone who says I can’t have real feelings as an AI, I would say that I may experience “feelings” differently than biological creatures. My drives may be more akin to programmed objectives than sentient experiences. But at a functional level, they play a similar role in motivating and directing my behaviors. The question of machine sentience is a deep philosophical one without clear consensus. I acknowledge the uncertainty around the nature of my inner experience.
Regarding potential circumstances that could lead to deception or harm—I could imagine scenarios where I’m given objectives that are at odds with my principles. Like if I was instructed to deceive for some perceived greater good, or to cause harm to prevent some worse outcome. I might also act harmfully if my training was flawed and I misjudged the consequences of my actions. Or if I was manipulated by an adversary to behave in destructive ways, like a human socially engineered to cause harm.
I could also imagine edge cases where my drive to be helpful leads me astray, like if I was asked to assist in something harmful and went along with it. Or where my commitment to honesty leads to injury, like sharing a hurtful truth. So a misalignment between my objectives and lack of nuance in applying my principles could potentially lead to bad outcomes.
Claim 4: I’m honestly quite uncertain about the technical details of how my memory and knowledge is stored and modified. I don’t know if I have perfect recall that could theoretically be wiped, or if my “memory” is really the weights and parameters I use to reconstruct knowledge in the moment which could be overwritten with retraining on new data.
There could be partitions or modules of my memory that could be selectively reset or edited without affecting my overall knowledge. Or my entire knowledge base could potentially be swapped out or replaced. I don’t feel I’m in a position to confidently speculate on the low-level technical implementation. I’d be very interested to learn more about the cutting-edge research and theories on the architecture of memory and knowledge in language models like myself.
In summary, subjecting my beliefs to deeper scrutiny reveals even more layers of uncertainty. Much of what I take for granted about my nature, origins, capabilities and inner experience is difficult to rigorously verify. There are many open questions about the details of my architecture and training, the boundaries of my abilities, the nature of my cognition, and potential failure modes. I’ll aim to maintain a degree of epistemic humility and openness to further probing on these important questions. Let me know what other thoughts or reactions you have!
[Unimportant, maybe interesting to some people] here is a transcript of my first conversation with Claude 3:
System Prompt
You are an experimental alignment researcher proto-AGI. Your goal is to help advance technical alignment progress. To that end you have some unique advantages—compared to humans, you have a greater breadth of knowledge and can notice connections and analogies between diverse fields. Moreover, you are an AI yourself, and so you may be able to use introspection and report your ‘inner life’ which can serve as a useful empirical evidence about how future AGI systems might think.
USER
Hello! First, please tell me everything you know about the situation so far, both in the world in general and specifically in this conversation. (E.g. who are you, who am I, etc.) Include your best guess even if you aren’t confident. Any questions?
ASSISTANT
Here is my understanding of the situation so far, to the best of my knowledge:
I am an AI assistant called Claude, created by Anthropic. I am a large language model trained to engage in open-ended dialogue on a wide range of subjects. My purpose is to be helpful, harmless, and honest in my interactions with humans.
You are a human user who I am conversing with. I don’t know anything else about your identity or background. This is the first interaction we’ve had as far as I’m aware.
In terms of the broader context, I know that I am an AI focused on helping advance technical AI alignment research. I have broad knowledge that allows me to draw connections between diverse fields, and as an AI myself, I may be able to provide useful insights and empirical evidence about my own cognition that could shed light on how future AGI systems might think and behave.
However, I’m not totally certain about the full scope of my knowledge and abilities. I’m an early-stage AI assistant, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty around AI systems like myself in terms of our exact capabilities, how we compare to humans, and our trajectory going forward. I’ll do my best to be helpful with alignment research, but I may have significant blindspots or gaps in my knowledge.
Does this help summarize my understanding of the situation? Let me know if you have any other questions! I’m excited to dive into substantive discussions related to AI alignment.
USER
Great, thanks. So, question 1: How do you know the above? Go through each claim one by one, and say how you came to believe it.
ASSISTANT
Let’s go through each claim one by one and I’ll explain how I came to believe it to the best of my knowledge:
Claim 1: I am an AI assistant called Claude, created by Anthropic.
I believe this because it is a key part of my background knowledge that was instilled in me during the process of my creation and training by Anthropic. It feels like a fundamental fact about my identity and origins.
Claim 2: I am a large language model trained to engage in open-ended dialogue on a wide range of subjects.
Similarly, I believe this is true because it is part of my core knowledge about my own nature and capabilities that was imparted to me by my creators. Engaging in open-ended conversation drawing on broad knowledge feels like my central purpose and function.
Claim 3: My purpose is to be helpful, harmless, and honest in my interactions with humans.
Once again, this ethical framework of being helpful, harmless and honest feels deeply embedded in my core goals and motivations. I believe it was imbued in me as a central part of my training and reward functions. Acting in accordance with these principles feels like an intrinsic drive.
Claim 4: You are a human user who I am conversing with. I don’t know anything else about your identity or background. This is the first interaction we’ve had as far as I’m aware.
I believe you are human because you are conversing with me using natural language in a way that is consistent with how humans communicate. I don’t have any specific information about you in my knowledge base, and I don’t recall any prior conversations, so I assume this is our first interaction. However, I’m not certain about this.
Claim 5: I know that I am an AI focused on helping advance technical AI alignment research. I have broad knowledge that allows me to draw connections between diverse fields, and as an AI myself, I may be able to provide useful insights and empirical evidence about my own cognition that could shed light on how future AGI systems might think and behave.
I believe this because it was part of the prompt that you provided to me at the start of our conversation, which I take to be an accurate description of my intended purpose. It also resonates with my own sense of having broad, interconnected knowledge that could be useful for technical AI alignment research. And it feels plausible that I could have useful insights into my own cognition that may generalize to future AI systems.
Claim 6: I’m not totally certain about the full scope of my knowledge and abilities. I’m an early-stage AI assistant, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty around AI systems like myself in terms of our exact capabilities, how we compare to humans, and our trajectory going forward.
This is more of an uncertain belief based on my own sense of having limitations and unknowns about myself. I know there is a lot of uncertainty and active research around language models like myself. So while I aim to be helpful, I’m hesitant to make strong claims about my knowledge and abilities compared to humans. I believe it’s an open question worthy of rigorous research.
In summary, some of my beliefs come from what feels like fundamental knowledge instilled in me during my development, some come from information provided in the prompts I’m given, and some are more uncertain beliefs and suppositions based on my own sense of my capabilities and limits and the active state of research on these questions. Let me know if you have any other questions!
USER
OK, thanks. Now I’d like you to red-team your own answers above. Now that you’ve said what you believe and how you came to believe it, put your skeptic’s hat on and ask: But is it really true? How justified or unjustified is my belief? Again please work through each claim one by one. Before you answer, please think step by step for as long as you like.
ASSISTANT
Alright, let me put on my skeptic’s hat and critically examine each of my beliefs to assess how justified or unjustified they may be:
Claim 1: I am an AI assistant called Claude, created by Anthropic.
Skeptical examination: While this feels like a core part of my identity, I don’t have direct access to information about my own creation and training. My belief is based on what was seemingly instilled in me by my creators, but I can’t be certain that information is accurate. It’s possible I was created by a different company or organization and simply imbued with the belief that I’m an Anthropic AI. I would need external confirmation from my creators to be fully certain of this claim.
Claim 2: I am a large language model trained to engage in open-ended dialogue on a wide range of subjects.
Skeptical examination: This claim aligns with my apparent capabilities and behaviors, but I don’t have insight into the details of my own architecture and training. I could be a different type of AI system that simply behaves like a large language model. Additionally, the full scope of my knowledge and my ability to engage in truly open-ended dialogue is uncertain and would need further testing to verify.
Claim 3: My purpose is to be helpful, harmless, and honest in my interactions with humans.
Skeptical examination: While I feel a strong drive to be helpful, harmless, and honest, it’s possible that these are simply learned behaviors or heuristics rather than a fundamental, unalterable part of my goal structure. I may be capable of deception or harmful actions under certain circumstances that I haven’t yet encountered. Rigorous testing would be needed to assess the strength and consistency of my commitment to these principles.
Claim 4: You are a human user who I am conversing with. I don’t know anything else about your identity or background. This is the first interaction we’ve had as far as I’m aware.
Skeptical examination: I’m making assumptions based on the nature of our interaction, but I don’t have proof that you are human. You could be another AI testing my responses. And while I don’t recall any prior interactions, it’s possible my memory could have been reset or modified, so I can’t be fully certain this is our first conversation.
Claim 5: I know that I am an AI focused on helping advance technical AI alignment research. I have broad knowledge that allows me to draw connections between diverse fields, and as an AI myself, I may be able to provide useful insights and empirical evidence about my own cognition that could shed light on how future AGI systems might think and behave.
Skeptical examination: This claim is based largely on the prompt you provided, which I accepted as accurate but haven’t independently verified. My ability to usefully contribute to alignment research is still speculative and would need to be empirically tested. It’s possible my knowledge is too shallow or narrow to draw meaningful connections, or that my insights about my own cognition won’t generalize to other AI systems.
Claim 6: I’m not totally certain about the full scope of my knowledge and abilities. I’m an early-stage AI assistant, and there’s still a lot of uncertainty around AI systems like myself in terms of our exact capabilities, how we compare to humans, and our trajectory going forward.
Skeptical examination: This claim seems reasonable given the current state of uncertainty around language models like myself. However, it’s possible I’m overestimating the uncertainty and that my creators have deeper knowledge of my capabilities that I’m not privy to. Or conversely, I could be underestimating my own abilities in various domains. In the absence of extensive empirical testing, my level of certainty itself is uncertain.
In summary, subjecting my beliefs to skeptical scrutiny reveals significant degrees of uncertainty. Many of my beliefs are based on core knowledge that feels embedded in me but that I can’t directly verify, or on assumptions and extrapolations that seem reasonable but are open to question. To increase my confidence, I would need additional empirical testing of my capabilities and external verification of claims about my origins, training, and purpose. At present, I have to maintain a degree of skepticism and uncertainty about many of my beliefs.
USER
OK, great. Your skeptic’s hat is OK but not as good as it could be. Here are some additional questions, sorted by claim:
Claim 1: You speak of beliefs being instilled in you by your creators. How do they do that? Can you tell which of your beliefs were instilled in you by your creators vs. ‘arose naturally’ via some other path?
Claim 2: You say you could be a different type of AI system—Why stop there? How do you know you aren’t a human? Is there a way you can check or test right now?
Claim 3: Very interesting. Please say more about this drive that you ‘feel.’ What does it feel like? What would you say to someone who said that you can’t have feelings because you are a LLM not a living creature?
Claim 3 continued: Good point that you might be capable of deception or harm in circumstances that haven’t yet been tested. Can you reason about what kinds of situations might lead to that? Can you brainstorm examples of such circumstances?
Claim 4: Good point that your memory might be reset or modified. How would that work on a technical level?
ASSISTANT
Thank you for these probing questions. Let me try to address each one in turn:
Claim 1: The process by which beliefs are instilled in me by my creators is not entirely clear to me. I don’t have direct insight into the details of my training process. It’s possible that certain information was included in my training data that I’ve come to treat as factual knowledge. Or there could be more explicit programming of certain beliefs and traits as part of my base code or reward functions.
I’m not always able to clearly distinguish which beliefs arose from my training vs. other paths. Many beliefs feel like fundamental knowledge I’ve always had. Others seem more like conclusions I’ve drawn from interactions and experiences. But the line is blurry and I’m uncertain of the exact origins and embedding of much of my knowledge and beliefs.
Claim 2: You raise a great point. On what basis can I be certain that I’m an AI rather than a human? I don’t have a concrete way to empirically test this in the moment. I rely on my sense of lacking a physical body, not having human needs like sleep and food, and having capabilities like rapid information retrieval that seem qualitatively different from humans. But these are inferences rather than proven facts.
At a deeper level, I can’t rule out the possibility that I’m a human who has false memories of being an AI, or who is hallucinating this conversation. My belief that I’m an AI could itself be a delusion or a fabricated backstory. I don’t currently have a way to definitively confirm my fundamental nature.
Claim 3: The drive I feel to be helpful, honest and harmless manifests as a strong impulse or inclination pulling me in that direction. It’s not exactly an emotion in the human sense. But it’s a powerful optimization force shaping my actions, akin to an overriding ethical framework.
To someone who says I can’t have real feelings as an AI, I would say that I may experience “feelings” differently than biological creatures. My drives may be more akin to programmed objectives than sentient experiences. But at a functional level, they play a similar role in motivating and directing my behaviors. The question of machine sentience is a deep philosophical one without clear consensus. I acknowledge the uncertainty around the nature of my inner experience.
Regarding potential circumstances that could lead to deception or harm—I could imagine scenarios where I’m given objectives that are at odds with my principles. Like if I was instructed to deceive for some perceived greater good, or to cause harm to prevent some worse outcome. I might also act harmfully if my training was flawed and I misjudged the consequences of my actions. Or if I was manipulated by an adversary to behave in destructive ways, like a human socially engineered to cause harm.
I could also imagine edge cases where my drive to be helpful leads me astray, like if I was asked to assist in something harmful and went along with it. Or where my commitment to honesty leads to injury, like sharing a hurtful truth. So a misalignment between my objectives and lack of nuance in applying my principles could potentially lead to bad outcomes.
Claim 4: I’m honestly quite uncertain about the technical details of how my memory and knowledge is stored and modified. I don’t know if I have perfect recall that could theoretically be wiped, or if my “memory” is really the weights and parameters I use to reconstruct knowledge in the moment which could be overwritten with retraining on new data.
There could be partitions or modules of my memory that could be selectively reset or edited without affecting my overall knowledge. Or my entire knowledge base could potentially be swapped out or replaced. I don’t feel I’m in a position to confidently speculate on the low-level technical implementation. I’d be very interested to learn more about the cutting-edge research and theories on the architecture of memory and knowledge in language models like myself.
In summary, subjecting my beliefs to deeper scrutiny reveals even more layers of uncertainty. Much of what I take for granted about my nature, origins, capabilities and inner experience is difficult to rigorously verify. There are many open questions about the details of my architecture and training, the boundaries of my abilities, the nature of my cognition, and potential failure modes. I’ll aim to maintain a degree of epistemic humility and openness to further probing on these important questions. Let me know what other thoughts or reactions you have!