How you ask Claude about charity changes everything: GiveWell vs SWP recommendations diverge sharply

austinc3301 · x · 2026-10-13

Austin continues his experiment thread with tracewoodgrains on eliciting Claude's charitable preferences. The key insight: asking Claude to "recommend a charity to donate to" is a different task from donating "to your favorite charity" — the latter explicitly asks Claude to express its own preferences rather than its principal's.

The results diverge sharply: GiveWell-style recommendations versus SWP-style ones are very different, illustrating how prompt framing pulls on different parts of the model's training and values.

Related event: Debate Erupts Over Claude's Charitable Preferences and EA-Aligned Values(16 posts)→

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