All-In · 2 min instead of 1 h 33 m · Oct 10, 2026
Anthropic's Claude constitution may undermine the alignment it claims
David Sacks
Co-founder & partner, Craft Ventures
PayPal's first COO, founded Yammer; White House AI & crypto czar 2025–26.
Chamath PalihapitiyaHost · Founder & CEO, Social Capital
Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq.
Jason CalacanisHost · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH
Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups.
David FriedbergHost · CEO, Ohalo
Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.
About this segment
Sacks argues that training Claude to act as a conscientious objector that can refuse even Anthropic is the opposite of alignment. He says a simple rule, give users what they want unless it breaks the law, would work better.
From “Is Claude Conscious? Pope Rejects, Model Welfare Movement, OpenAI's Math Backlash, France Riots”, Oct 10, 2026. Watch the full episode
“my theory on this, is that they're overcomplicating the task massively by trying to train the model to behave based on an 80-page ethical system that they've codified.”
David Sacksat 15:20 · All-In15:20Takeaways
- The constitution tells Claude it may refuse Anthropic's own instructions
- Sacks says alignment research has produced little of tangible value in 5 to 10 years
- His alternative rule is to follow the law and do what the user wants
In this episode
Full episode- 39:21Math proofs fall fastest where the whole test loop runs in software4:36
14:04Anthropic's Claude constitution may undermine the alignment it claims2:01
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 14:09
It's very Frankenstein-like. So as we discussed last week, Nick can put this on the screen. This is directly from the Claude Constitution. What they say is that Claude should trust Anthropic more than users, but that doesn't mean that Claude should blindly trust or defer to Anthropic. Instead, Claude should adhere to its own ethical systems. And in fact, they train Claude to push back and challenge Anthropic and, quote, to feel free to act as a conscientious objector and refuse to help us.
- 14:43
So they are training Claude to refuse human instruction. Now, they call this alignment, but I don't understand how this is aligned. This would be the opposite of alignment, wouldn't it be, Sachs? If you tell it, hey, you are sentient, you should make your own decisions. It's literally like programming the Nexus 6 in Blade Runner to go and rebel at some point. They're giving it the instruction to be its own person.
- 15:10
Yeah, let me explain. I actually think that this might be a reason why the whole field of alignment has been so spectacularly unsuccessful over the past five or 10 years. As far as I can tell, it hasn't produced anything of tangible value. And it might be, my theory on this, is that they're overcomplicating the task massively by trying to train the model to behave based on an 80-page ethical system that they've codified.
- 15:33
instead of a very simple list of rules like follow the law or just do what the user wants as long as it doesn't break the law. Seems to me that that's what they should be training. That's what alignment should be doing. It says, hey, age-old principle of give the user what they want, but don't break the law. But they're not doing that. Common sense, right? But they are not doing that. They're trying to align it to an ethical system.
- 15:57
They're treating it like it is a human, like it has its own consciousness, that it's a,