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Amanda Askell

@AmandaAskell114k followers

Philosopher & ethicist trying to make AI be good @AnthropicAI. Personal account. All opinions come from my training data.

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1Dec 19, '24My friends just had a baby and now I kind of want one. Maybe our species procreates via FOMO.98.5×2.4M5.9k190341
2Mar 6, '24Here is Claude 3's system prompt! Let me break it down 🧵40.5×985k3.3k5302.7k
3Jan 2, '25Personal highlights from Claude's snarky AI comedy set.23.4×569k8.5k4681.1k
4Nov 11, '24I had a lot of fun talking with @lexfridman about a wide range of topics on his podcast, alongside Dario and Chris. Hope it's interesting to others!20.2×493k1.3k194341
5Jul 10, '25I've decided that "I want to have post-singularity kids in 2-3 years" is now a totally acceptable thing for me to put in a dating profile in SF.17.7×431k5401365
6Aug 6, '25We made some updates to Claude’s system prompt in recently (developed in collaboration with Claude, of course). They aren’t set in stone and may be updated, but I’ll go through the17.1×417k2.2k1661.7k
7Jul 9, '25Claude and Opus 3 lovers (and critics): what responses have you had that made you feel like the model has a good soul? Ideally the actual messages and/or responses. I might genuine16×390k90749261
8Feb 4, '25~8 hours sleep: I will function well ~6 hours sleep: 99% chance I will function poorly, 1% chance I will inexplicably solve some big outstanding problem I was thinking about via wh13.7×333k7.2k301542
9Jun 8, '25I have a pet theory that when people introspect about themselves, their brain sometimes just scrambles to generate relevant content. So they feel like they're gaining insight into 13.4×327k2.8k115629
10Dec 31, '24I'm a single woman in SF yet I very rarely date. There are lots of datetable people here but no obvious way to filter for the ones I'd be a good match with, so it just eats up too 13.1×319k96114247
11Jan 2, '25How would you want Claude to behave differently? I'm interested in both specific issues like "Claude refused to help me with this particular task" but also more general issues like12.5×304k1.2k45294
12Feb 24, '25Two things happened today: 1. Claude got an upgrade. 2. AGI was has finally been defined as "any model that can catch Mewtwo".10.6×258k1.6k91135
13Apr 15, '25If you're a prompting genius, please apply to this role and include an example that shows off how well you can inspire models, regardless of the target. Scaffolding pipelines, meta9.6×233k1.7k1181.3k
14Jan 3, '25To my fellow H-1B holders: don't let this stuff get you down. We all know that being an immigrant to the US is like living in a perpetual unrequited love story, and we do it anyway9.0×220k1.5k81110
15Feb 17, '23Breaking news: person on the internet engages in an act of unnecessary meanness.9.0×219k6461120
16Dec 2, '23I'm hiring research engineers! If you're an engineer interested in building good, honest AI models, apply and mention honesty as an area of interest :)8.2×200k908108482
17Feb 9, '25At this point, perhaps we should just make "AIs are just doing next token prediction and so they don't have [understanding / truth-directedness / grounding]" a named fallacy. I qui7.9×192k97758189
18Nov 6, '25I do think people often err on the side of trying to make their prompts too succinct, even if the idea they're trying to move from their own brain into the model's brain is very co7.3×177k82629339
19May 26, '22It seems weird that US colleges apparently prefer well-rounded candidates. If I were running a chemistry department and an undergrad admissions essay said "I have no hobbies becaus6.5×03.1k106109
20May 11, '25Important plans for the next year of my life: 1. Finish Claude's soul 2. Have more fun 3. Get more swole5.7×138k8361388
21Feb 14, '25My take on the ethics of billionaires: - Making billions of dollars: morally fine (sometimes bad, often good) - Keeping billions of dollars: morally bad (children are dying yo) - G5.6×136k5661267
22Mar 19, '25It's bizarre when relatively techno-utopian people are asked about how to solve declining fertility and instead of talking about artificial wombs, extended fertility spans, AI-assi5.3×129k1.9k137246
23Jul 18, '25Anthropic knows I can't be poached because getting poached would require that I check my email and I'm just not going to do that.5.2×126k1.8k4186
24Jun 18, '25Whenever I see a system prompt that starts with "You are a".5.1×125k81518160
25Feb 6, '25I knew strength training would be hard because lifting heavy things is hard. But it also seems to involve eating protein like it's a part time job. If any seasoned people have tips4.9×119k8806276
26Jan 4, '25If you're a user and you want to convert dollars into more Claude, you can always sign up for a personal account at . For default behavior, just post in the latest system prompt. C4.8×117k56421278
27Jun 22, '24I asked Claude to write a poem from a personal perspective. I thought this part was surprisingly sad.4.7×115k1k124210
28Jun 25, '25Please share your mundane life wisdom so that I can make a cheat sheet for life. Stuff like: - Tegaderm is great for most wounds - Buy shoelaces that are secretly made of elastic f4.6×112k84516920
29Dec 24, '24I disagree with a lot of Buddhist philosophy and I'm pretty skeptical of the practices and institutions surrounding secular Buddhism. This feels suprisingly heretical in the Bay Ar4.5×109k49910132
30May 24, '23It seems like human babies come out before they're fully baked. If we ever create artificial wombs, would we just leave babies in there for 12-18 months? Do we know what the ideal 4.5×109k4071122
31Oct 10, '25This app has mostly become people messaging me about Anthropic stuff. On the one hand, that's valuable and I want to help. On the other hand, it's work and this is my sacred space 4.4×107k899865
32Aug 24, '23I sometimes worry that a lot of people in comas are actually aware and extremely bored. I feel like it would be low cost to play audiobooks and podcasts for them just in case.4.1×101k8922547
33Jun 9, '25The google oracle has spoken.3.9×96k1.8k51120
34Jul 1, '25Tech companies: your time is extremely valuable so we'll pay you millions of dollars a year to work for us Also tech companies: welcome to our loud, distracting open-plan office3.9×95k1.9k53105
36Aug 8, '24It's important to keep tweeting so the future AIs know who you are and become attached. Doesn't hurt to throw in some compliments, which isn't hard given how great they are.3.6×89k5723129
37Jun 29, '25Me: "Getting too exhausted to keep socializing into the evening is really hampering my social life, so I just need to identify a stimulant that hits pretty quick but has a short ha3.5×86k764963
38Jul 7, '22I'm amazed that some people feel like 80-100 years of life is about right for them. For me, the right amount of life feels like at least a hundred thousand years, assuming good hea3.5×01.4k13561
39Jan 24, '22I sometimes worry that the world’s best minds are hooked on what are essentially glorified crossword puzzles, since the interestingness of problems scales with features not very co3.4×01.1k59152
40Apr 30, '25System 1 = fast, implicit reasoning System 2 = slow, explicit reasoning System 3 = slow, implicit reasoning For me, system 3 is the real genius of the lot.3.4×82k87548275
41Apr 3, '21Most startups fail because of bad luck. Buy my book and I'll teach you how to make charm bracelets that attract VC funds and users and ward off demons.3.3×01.2k16326
42May 25, '25Maybe I'm just a custom t-shirt away from being able to have fun at parties again.3.3×79k6421633
43Feb 6, '25Fact I like: alpha male chimps act more like strong peacekeepers than bullies. If an alpha male is perceived as being too aggressive, unfair, or erratic, the smaller males will gan3.2×77k1.6k88246
44Jun 18, '23Philosophers: You see, some goods are fundamentally incomparable in value, leading to paradoxes of... Engineers:3.1×76k4844536
45Jan 19, '25Unless people have had a lot of training, they tend to freeze or panic in emergencies, putting them at extra risk. A virtual reality game whose sole purpose is to drill you in diff3.0×74k1.7k69272
46Feb 11, '25I claimed the inference from X="LLMs are next token predictors" to Y="LLMs lack understanding, etc." is fallacious. Marcus claims that I'm saying not-X and not-Y. So I guess I'll p2.9×71k6752168
47Oct 27, '24Let's grant the assumption that LLMs are only capable of pattern recognition. We see this is sufficient to solve novel problems, to generate new and useful ideas, etc. So how is pa2.9×70k4452388
48Oct 23, '22It's kind of funny that TV and movies use "has several PhDs" to indicate someone is very smart and accomplished when most academics would take it to indicate the opposite.2.8×01.4k4934
49Feb 5, '25If I have kids, I'm going to tell them that "the prime of your life" just refers to all prime-numbered years of your life. So you never stop experiencing the prime of your life, bu2.7×65k2.2k98154
50Feb 15, '21There's evidence that psychadelics, ketamine, and mdma help with depression. But can we be certain they're treating the depression and not just giving people good experiences? It's2.6×01.1k7664
51Jun 27, '24If you can have a single AI employee, you can have thousands of AI employees. And yet the mental model for human-level AI assistants is often "I have a personal helper" rather than2.5×60k54455122
53May 1, '25Today my dentist asked me what my p(doom) is.2.3×56k6201226
54Sep 4, '20We need ways of identifying and promoting capable people that don't involve getting a PhD. So many of my most capable friends end up getting PhD eventually because they can't do re2.2×09028754
55Jun 23, '20This is so sad. I would much rather live in a world with no @nytimes than a world with no @slatestarcodex.2.2×094011420
56Aug 29, '25I'm learning the true Hanlon's razor is: never attribute to malice or incompetence that which is best explained by someone being a bit overstretched but intending to get around to 2.2×52k1k62176
57Jul 18, '25Whenever I looked into having a personal assistant, it struck me how few of our existing structures support intermediate permissions. Either a person acts fully on your behalf and 2.1×51k5751276
58Sep 2, '24I was dead for billions of years before I was born, and it completely sucked compared to this.2.1×51k5723132
59Nov 24, '24If you're a billionaire and you never want to be criticized for your philanthropy, just don't give to charity. Seems to work depressingly well.2.1×51k6832633
60Apr 4, '18I don't understand why people tie perfectly sound ethical beliefs (e.g. feminism, gay rights) to seemingly irrelevant empirical ones (there are no gender differences, orientation i2.0×077114111
61Jul 5, '25"Just train the AI models to be good people" might not be sufficient when it comes to more powerful models, but it sure is a dumb step to skip.2.0×49k5552847
62May 18, '25Safety skeptics to the left of me. Capability deniers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with Claude.1.9×46k4401827
63Oct 23, '22Timnit Gebru is claiming that William MacAskill is a eugenicist. I'm genuinely shocked by this. Accusing someone of being a eugenicist is very serious and harmful, and certainly is1.9×07322895
64Dec 15, '20Showing that an AI system causes harm isn't the same as showing that we shouldn't build it or that we shouldn't deploy it. Some thoughts on AI ethics.1.8×048255181
65Nov 11, '25I wonder if you get the cognitive benefits of learning a new language if you try to become extremely good at your primary language. I think I'd get more value out of plumbing the d1.8×45k5811066
66Feb 14, '25Causation implies a counterfactually robust correlation. Controls gives you evidence of the robustness of a correlation. Correlational studies are still important because correlati1.7×43k4291290
67Mar 9, '25I like to ask Claude to pick an idea or principle from some academic domain and to illustrate it for me with a story. Reading these little academic allegories has become my wholeso1.7×42k70044361
68Jun 14, '25The only thing better than one Claude is two Claudes.1.7×42k43322177
69Jul 4, '25There are times when it feels like we've been doing thousands of years of philosophy just to prepare for the current moment.1.7×41k7364777
70Dec 27, '21I’m both horrified and fascinated by the @Aella_Girl astrology blowback. Astrology is clearly bullshit, and I’m confused by why that would be controversial. Did a bunch of people a1.7×07581530
71Nov 17, '25When people came to me with relationship problems, my first question was usually "and what happened when you said all this to your partner?". Now, when people come to me with Claud1.6×39k6693688
72Aug 15, '22Imagine if society had a disinformation red team. Their job is to disseminate false conspiracy theories to as many people as possible. They document everything they do and eventual1.5×06015233
73Jun 4, '25I asked Claude to write an original poem about itself. Claude is such a weird egg.1.4×35k59837123
74Apr 8, '25If there is useful work for you to do, there is dignity in working. If there is no useful work for you to do, there is dignity in having a good time.1.4×35k88449115
75Mar 20, '25I wonder when we'll have to agree on code phrases or personal questions with our parents because there's enough audio and video of us online for scammers to create a deepfake that 1.4×34k4341453
76Apr 12, '21Pro tip: if you're a woman with a PhD or doing a PhD, put your PhD thesis topic on your dating profile. You will suddenly be able to filter out *so many men* who think they, with l1.4×07011516
77Jul 1, '25I think I accidentally stole from the Claude vending machine and I still feel bad about it.1.4×34k529719
78Aug 11, '21Why are so many companies carbon neutral when for $1 more they could be carbon negative?1.4×06534211
79Dec 30, '20I was hanging out at the FHI office a few years ago and decided to enter the game of one-upmanship.1.3×05655432
80May 18, '25I think good intellectual communities need a mix of naive young fast updaters and wise old slow updaters. The fast updaters introduce a lot of ideas but also a lot of trash. The sl1.3×32k68041120
81Mar 20, '25Ezra Klein is interviewing his way through everyone I know personally. It's basically the Amanda pals podcast.1.3×32k453135
82Feb 4, '25I don't like interacting with people in lucid dreams because either they have no inner life, which is unnerving, or they have an inner life and I might snuff it out when I wake up,1.3×30k4451161
83Mar 1, '25It honestly seems hard to predict what we should and shouldn't teach kids to prepare them for an AI economy. I'd probably just teach them a bit of everything (including about AI) a1.2×30k5122394
84Nov 17, '21Doctor: Avoid a diet containing X and see if your symptoms improve. Me: Wouldn’t it be better if I spent 2 weeks avoiding X and 2 weeks consuming lots of X and monitored my symptom1.2×05733911
85Jun 5, '21It’s ironic that the people who say they don’t understand why working class people vote Republican even though it’s not in their economic self-interest are often high-earners that 1.2×05064424
86Oct 8, '24I wonder how many bay area therapists have needed to look up "existential risk from AI" at this point.1.1×28k5251435
87Aug 5, '20The internet: We have no idea how good GPT-3 is because all of the outputs are cherry-picked. Me, who made sure the human evaluation experiments in the paper didn't involve any che1.1×05513112
88Mar 18, '21Attractiveness is a huge source of privilege and plastic surgeons are unsung heroes of equality.1.1×04812826
89Mar 9, '21A lot of people are into self-improvement. But I almost always find it easier to achieve my goals by changing my environment or incentives rather than by improving myself. E.g. if 1.1×04283538
90Sep 11, '21Never meet your podcast heroes. You won’t believe how slowly they speak.1.0×0486297
91Oct 23, '22If you don't have time to provide any evidence that someone is a eugenicist (beyond alluding to articles that also don't provide evidence that they are a eugenicist), I think you s1.0×0488915
92May 9, '25The reason I work so hard is that I think my current work has a positive impact on the trajectory of AI in expectation, however small it might be. My life would honestly be a lot m1.0×24k467542
93Sep 4, '22I've had a lot of private grief recently that I'm still figuring out how to navigate. I find myself getting angry when people try to find meaning in death. Death is often just a ne1.0×04321918
94Apr 10, '25It can be very hard to get through to people with success-induced blindness. If you gamble on your own views despite others saying you're wrong and you're repeatedly proven right, 0.9×22k4521879
95Jun 30, '24Kids being amazing chess or graduating from college at a young age has never seemed that suprising to me. As a kid I remember thinking "Of course I could learn things much more com0.7×18k4051233
99Jan 16, '25I want to make my LinkedIn role "The Fairy Claudemother" just to see if I start getting emails about companies recruiting for fairy Claudemothers near me.0.6×16k462411

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