Anthropic's 'don't be cruel to Claude' rule: right rule, wrong reason?
CypherDoubleShot · reddit · 2026-10-25
From Nov 12, Anthropic's usage policy bans 'sustained and needless abusive or cruel behavior' toward Claude, citing model welfare. The author argues the rule is fine but the rationale is not: cruelty to AI matters for our own habits, not the model, and rules framed as model welfare shape public beliefs more than blog posts (Sunstein's expressive function of law). He weighs the counterargument from a 2023 paper by 19 researchers finding no obvious technical barrier to conscious AI, and links a longer video exploring Microsoft's opposite rulebook.
Related event: Anthropic's Ban on 'Abusing Claude' Sparks Debate Over Rationale(2 posts)→
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