Does A.I. Need a Constitution?

A new set of precepts is meant to make the chatbot Claude wise, decent, and safe. It also marks a striking transfer of public responsibility from constitutional government to private tech firms.

By Jill Lepore

March 23, 2026

The constitution released by Anthropic this winter is not, in any legal, political, or even conventional sense, a constitution.Illustration by Ben Hickey

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Jill Lepore is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a professor at Harvard. Her books include “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State” (August, 2026).

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