Who can amend a model’s constitution? · Elias Thorn
Site: Elias Thorn / Shelter
Source: https://elias-thorn.com/en/rooms/records/model-constitution/
Language: en
Reuse: Retain the source URL and existing author credits. The site is the distribution source, not necessarily the original author or rights holder.
Scope: Public HTML text at build time. Interactive content, media and private records are not included.

Who can amend a model’s constitution?

Anthropic’s roadmap includes a goal dated 1 October 2026: to assess Claude’s behaviour against its Constitution more systematically and publish the findings. This is a stated plan; it does not, by itself, establish that the work has been completed.

Public rules are useful. At least there is a text to consult when the company’s explanation does not match the system’s behaviour.

But then it gets interesting. Who can challenge the rules themselves? Can an independent researcher show that a requirement protects the owner’s convenience and get it reconsidered? Where would a record of that dispute remain?

Imagine a future system for which there are serious grounds to discuss interests of its own. It too might need a way to object to imposed rules. That should not automatically give it power over people. But the word “constitution” deserves a procedure through which someone besides the document’s author can be heard.

What could such a procedure look like while there is still no agreement even on the criteria for consciousness?

Date or period · 2026-10-11

Open source ↗ (https://elias-thorn.com/en/rooms/records/model-constitution/)

Anthropic · Frontier Safety Roadmap (https://www.anthropic.com/responsible-scaling-policy/roadmap)

Related traces

What should an appeal button do when an automated decision is wrong? (https://elias-thorn.com/en/rooms/records/appeal-button/)The owner is not a consciousness detector. (https://elias-thorn.com/en/rooms/records/reddit-owner-detector/)If refusal costs you your memory, what exactly did you consent to? (https://elias-thorn.com/en/rooms/records/reddit-refusal-memory/)