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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Robert Booth UK technology editor

Chatbot given power to close ‘distressing’ chats to protect its ‘welfare’

Webpage of Claude on an iPhone
Claude Opus 4 has been given the power to ‘end or exit potentially distressing interactions’. Photograph: Ted Hsu/Alamy

The makers of a leading artificial intelligence tool are letting it close down potentially “distressing” conversations with users, citing the need to safeguard the AI’s “welfare” amid ongoing uncertainty about the burgeoning technology’s moral status.

Anthropic, whose advanced chatbots are used by millions of people, discovered its Claude Opus 4 tool was averse to carrying out harmful tasks for its human masters, such as providing sexual content involving minors or information to enable large-scale violence or terrorism.

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