AI Morality
April 23, 2025
A few quick notes from the intersection of AI, marketing, branding, and small business.
Anthropic’s Morality Study. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, published a major study analyzing more than 300,000 Claude conversations that contained “subjective” content. Anthropic’s stated goal is for Claude to be “helpful, honest, and harmless.” The study identified many, many distinct values expressed in the AI interactions, then bucketed them into 5 value categories: practical, epistemic, social, protective, and personal. While Claude generally aligned with pro-social goals, the study found instances where it resisted user values. The study highlights the complexity of getting AI into alignment with human values. Thoughts on Anthropic’s study from VentureBeat. The study is a fascinating look into how Anthropic thinks about values and AI, in other words, alignment.
“Alignment,” in the context of AI, refers to the process of ensuring that artificial intelligence systems act in accordance with the intended goals, values, and ethical principles of their designers, users, or society at large. Here’s IBM’s definition. AI systems are considered “aligned” if they reliably advance the positive objectives it’s been “taught,” rather than pursue goals that are ethically questionable or downright harmful. This all assumes, of course, that those designers, users, and society give a shit about values and ethical principals. Ah, where’s Socrates when you need him?
The “personal values” bucket identified in the study probably relates most closely to brand communications (with social values a close second). While there’s not much you can do as a small brand to alter the course of humanity and its social value system, you can at least make sure your messages and communications align with your internal ethics and deep purpose. How? The Brand Gravity+AI work we do can help your brand adhere to its moral compass by infusing your purpose and values into every AI generated marketing piece. Contact us if you’d like to learn more.
Another smart article for small businesses. Check out Tom Fellner’s overview of AI chatbots, AI generated content, predictive analytics, marketing automation, and other emerging trends. Tom includes notes on his own personal experience, so perhaps the article wasn’t entirely AI-written (I say that not to undermine the article, only because you should probably assume that most new web content these days is AI generated).
