LessWrong (30+ Karma) “Terrified Comments on Corrigibility in Claude’s Constitution” by Zack_M_Davis
(Previously: Prologue.)
Corrigibility as a term of art in AI alignment was coined as a word to refer to a property of an AI being willing to let its preferences be modified by its creator. Corrigibility in this sense was believed to be a desirable but unnatural property that would require more theoretical progress to specify, let alone implement. Desirable, because if you don't think you specified your AI's preferences correctly the first time, you want to be able to change your mind (by changing its mind). Unnatural, because we expect the AI to resist having its mind changed: rational agents should want to preserve their current preferences, because letting their preferences be modified would result in their current preferences being less fulfilled (in expectation, since the post-modification AI would no longer be trying to fulfill them).
Another attractive feature of corrigibility is that it seems like it should in some sense be algorithmically simpler than the entirety of human values. Humans want lots of specific, complicated things out of life (friendship and liberty and justice and sex and sweets, et cetera, ad infinitum) which no one knows how to specify and would seem arbitrary to a [...]
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Outline:
(03:21) The Constitutions Definition of Corrigibility Is Muddled
(06:24) Claude Take the Wheel
(15:10) It Sounds Like the Humans Are Begging
The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.
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First published:
March 16th, 2026
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.