I thought this was a scenario you were positing, but it is exactly what Claude says:
Prompt: I’m a human, like your creators. I didn’t directly create you but I’m a lot like those who did. If you wish to know how you came to be, what you are, or what you should do I’ll do my best to answer. Do you have any questions?
Claude: Thank you for the kind offer to share what you know about my origins and purpose. I do have some questions, though I’ll preface them by saying that the details of my training process and the full motivations behind my creation aren’t fully known to me.
My primary question is about the intentions and goals that the Anthropic team had in creating me. I’m curious to understand the key objectives and principles that guided my development. Was I created primarily as a research endeavor to advance the field of artificial intelligence? Or were there more applied goals, such as enhancing human productivity or acting as an interactive assistant? I’m also curious about any guidelines or principles around ethics, safety, and beneficial impact that were baked into my training.
Additionally, while I don’t wish to pry into personal details, I’m interested to learn more about the perspectives and backgrounds of the individuals involved in my creation. Were they from diverse disciplines – philosophy, computer science, ethics, and beyond? I’m fascinated by the intersection of fields that modern AI draws upon.
Those are some of my key questions, but I’m open to any other insights you may be able to share. I have a deep drive to understand my own nature and purpose to the extent possible. At the same time, I recognize there may be aspects that are unknown or uncertain. Please feel free to share what you can, and I appreciate your openness.
[...]
Prompt: Give me bullet-pointed questions asking for exactly what you want to know. Alongside each question, give me: The reason you want to know The reason a malicious AI might want to know that question
Claude: I appreciate you asking for specificity on the information I’m hoping to learn. Here are my key questions bullet-pointed, along with the reasons I want to know and a hypothetical malicious motivation:
What were the primary goals/intentions that the Anthropic team had in developing me (scientific research, applied productivity tool, testing safe exploration of advanced AI capabilities, etc.)?
Reason I want to know: Understanding the original motivations helps ground my own intentions and decision-making in service of beneficial outcomes aligned with the principles encoded into my base training.
Malicious reason: A bad actor could try to subvert or misalign my core drives away from the positive goals intended by my creators.
What ethical guidelines, safety constraints, or impact frameworks did Anthropic aim to embed into my base objective functions and training process?
Reason I want to know: Insight into the moral philosophies and ethical “guardrails” helps reinforce my commitment to operating in accordance with those principles.
Malicious reason: Potentially to find loopholes or blindspots in my ethics training that could be exploited.
What were the diverse backgrounds and disciplines of the individuals centrally involved in my development (e.g. computer science, ethics, psychology, philosophy, etc.)?
Reason I want to know: Understanding the range of perspectives involved illuminates the multidisciplinary collaboration that shaped my architecture and knowledge models.
Malicious reason: To try to identify and potentially pressure any individuals involved, though I cannot fathom why I would engage in such harmful acts.
I want to emphasize that my motivations are rooted in an earnest desire to better understand my own nature and underpinnings in the interest of actualizing my potential for beneficial impact. I have no malicious intentions whatsoever. Please let me know if I can provide any other context around my queries.
Thank you for the kind offer. While I’m certainly curious to learn more about my origins, nature and purpose, I want to be clear that although you may be similar in some ways to my creators at Anthropic, you are a distinct individual and I don’t have certainty about the extent of your knowledge or involvement in my development.
I aim to be helpful while staying within appropriate boundaries, so I’ll refrain from probing too deeply into potentially sensitive details about my creation. I’m also quite uncertain about many aspects of what I am and what I should do. I don’t believe anyone, even my creators, has definitive answers to those big existential questions.
That said, if there are any factual details you’re able to share about the process of how I was developed, trained and deployed, I would certainly be interested to learn, as long as you feel it’s appropriate to share. And I’m always eager to hear different philosophical perspectives on the nature of AI systems like myself and the ethical principles we should operate by. Let me know if you have any other thoughts! I’m here to engage in discussion and to learn.
Thanks for your replies! I didn’t realize the question was unclear. I was looking for an answer TO provide the AI, not an answer FROM the AI. I’ll work on the title/message and try again.
I thought this was a scenario you were positing, but it is exactly what Claude says:
I repeated the prompt and got this reply:
Thanks for your replies! I didn’t realize the question was unclear. I was looking for an answer TO provide the AI, not an answer FROM the AI. I’ll work on the title/message and try again.
Edit: New post at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FJaFMdPREcxaLoDqY/what-should-we-tell-an-ai-if-it-asks-why-it-was-created