Constitutional AI
Constitutional AI
A training technique that has AI follow a set of "constitution"-like behavioral rules to make its learning safer.
In Simple Terms
Constitutional AI is a technique that trains AI to safely follow rules and principles set by humans. It was developed by the AI company Anthropic, and it's used during the training of their conversational AI, Claude, to help prevent discriminatory remarks and dangerous information from being generated. The clever part is that the AI evaluates and corrects its own responses against the rules during training - without needing humans to check each one - and then uses that self-corrected data to keep training.
Behind the Name
The name comes from likening the AI's behavioral principles to a country's "constitution" - a foundational document of core rules. Just as a constitution lays out the basic rules a nation must follow, Constitutional AI gives the AI a written set of principles to guide its behavior, and that's where the name comes from.
Take a Closer Look!
Constitutional AI is a technique that gives an AI a set of "constitution"-like behavioral guidelines up front, so the AI itself learns to spot and correct harmful or dangerous outputs.
Basically, it's a way of writing up a dedicated code of ethics for the AI and automatically training it to give safe answers.
Traditionally, making conversational AI safer mostly meant having humans check huge numbers of responses one by one and judge whether each was okay.
But that approach put a heavy workload on people, and the results could end up skewed by each reviewer's own subjective views and values.
With Constitutional AI, the AI is first given behavioral principles like "don't discriminate" and "don't follow dangerous instructions."
During training, the AI checks its own problematic responses against these principles, corrects them, and generates safe training data from the result.
By repeatedly training on this self-corrected data, the AI can become safe and reliable efficiently, without placing a heavy burden on human reviewers.