{"id":307092,"date":"2026-02-28T22:07:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-28T22:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/307092\/"},"modified":"2026-02-28T22:07:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-28T22:07:14","slug":"ai-models-like-capitalism-are-best-served-with-a-conscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/307092\/","title":{"rendered":"AI models, like capitalism, are best served with a conscience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/p>\n

Imagine a car that won\u2019t let the driver go above the speed limit. It sounds simple enough, yet there isn\u2019t much demand for a machine that takes moral decisions away from the user. Even Tesla\u2019s speed limit-obeying \u201cSloth\u201d model is optional; users of its self-driving cars can also go full \u201cMad Max\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the world of AI, some companies think customers would prefer products with morals pre-installed. Take Anthropic, whose Claude chatbot is trained to \u201chave good values\u201d<\/a>. This is making Anthropic unpopular in some quarters. The US Department of Defense has protested against limits that would disallow self-directed lethal strikes or mass snooping on citizens \u2014 a dispute that on Friday was headed towards a tense stand-off<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rivals are, meanwhile, trying to undermine Anthropic\u2019s safety-first creds, which it exhibits through a \u201cconstitution\u201d that tells Claude to prioritise safety, ethics and helpfulness in that order. OpenAI\u2019s Sam Altman has branded the company \u201cauthoritarian\u201d<\/a>. Elon Musk, founder of xAI and the Grok chatbot, called it \u201cmisanthropic\u201d<\/a> for what he claims is bias against white men, among others. <\/p>\n

Do customers care? After all, Anthropic\u2019s real growth driver, accounting for some 80 per cent of revenue, is selling tools to corporate users focused mainly on efficiency and profit. Whether the AI would push the nuclear button, as researchers at King\u2019s College suggest it sometimes would,<\/a> is of little direct import to such customers.<\/p>\n

Investors certainly don\u2019t think Anthropic\u2019s ethical stylings a hindrance. The company just raised money at a $350bn valuation<\/a> and may seek to go public later this year. The effectiveness of Claude Code, its programming aide, has helped knock $1tn off the combined value of S&P 500 software stocks this year. Anthropic\u2019s claim that Claude can code in COBOL, a clunky language used in IT mainframes, shaved $30bn off IBM\u2019s market capitalisation in a single day. <\/p>\n

\"Bar<\/p>\n

There is one area where a bot\u2019s integrity does matter today: hallucinations. Peter Gostev of AI evaluation outfit Arena has published a \u201cbullshit benchmark\u201d<\/a> that tests whether models challenge nonsensical questions or simply respond with more hogwash. Anthropic\u2019s scored best; some of OpenAI\u2019s were among the worst. Even then, that may have more to do with a model\u2019s quality of analysis than its inherent views on truthfulness.<\/p>\n

The shift to agentic AI \u2014 bots that don\u2019t just assist but actually execute tasks and exert judgment \u2014 will raise the stakes. As AI gets more humanlike, and its role within the company gets more senior, how it responds to complex challenges and conflicts will matter more. When is it better to ignore a command? When could pursuing a short-term goal lead to longer-term problems? When is it OK to tell the boss to \u201cshove it\u201d?<\/p>\n

For better or worse, it\u2019s really no different to what companies seek in their employees. For less critical and more process-driven jobs, employers seek workers who follow rules. At senior levels, where an individual\u2019s actions can affect the value of the whole firm, good judgment in unusual situations becomes valuable, and commands higher pay.<\/p>\n

Of course, whether a company\u2019s fundamental view of \u201cethical\u201d will correspond with Anthropic\u2019s is up for debate. One day an agent will be asked to do something bad for the world but good for a company\u2019s profit. A model that puts a premium on good behaviour ought to be more valuable; in the real corporate world, one that prized shareholder value even more would no doubt clean up.<\/p>\n

john.foley@ft.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-307092","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307092\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}