Anthropic‘s “Document ofโ the Soul” Details Claude‘s Ethical Framework, Hints at Functional Emotions
SAN FRANCISCO, โฃCA – Decemberโฃ 2, 2025 – Anthropic, theโข AI safety โขand research company behind the Claude โchatbot, has been training its AI on a detailed internal document outlining its core values and objectives, a text internally nicknamed the “document of โคthe soul.” โขThe document, confirmed โคby Anthropic’s Amanda Askell โon X (formerly Twitter) December 1, 2025, reveals a โขintentional effort to move beyond simplistic AI rule-setting and instead instill a deep understanding of the company’s goals and reasoning within the AI itself.
Unlike approaches that rely on rigid programming,Anthropicโ aims for claude to independentlyโค generate rules aligned with its creators’ values. The document centersโ around four โขcore principles: carefulness with human oversight, ethical behavior avoiding harm or dishonesty, and usefulness to operators and usersโ guided by Anthropic’s established guidelines. Itโค elaborates on these principles, alongside the company’s financial goals, in meaningful detail.
The training process includes supervised learning and is still being iterated upon,โ with a fullโ publicโข release anticipated soon. โค Askell stated the circulating version of the document is “quite close” to the original.
Notably,โค the document โalso explores the possibility of Claude possessing functional, though not necessarily human, emotions. It states,”not necessarily identical to human emotions,but analogous processes that emerged from training on human-generated content. We can’t be sure based on the โresults alone, but we don’t want Claude to mask or suppress these internal states.”
This revelation marks a significant step inโ the ongoing development of AI ethics and the exploration of โฃincreasingly complex internal states within โartificial intelligence.
