Anthropic makes the case for anthropomorphizing AI chatbots

It's an oft-repeated taboo in the tech world: Don't anthropomorphize artificial intelligence. Yet in a new research paper published this week, Anthropic AI experts argue that there may be major benefits to breaking this taboo and granting AI human characteristics. The paper, "Emotion Concepts and their Function in a Large Language Model," not only argues that anthropomorphizing AI chatbots like Claude may sometimes be useful, but that failing to do so could drive more harmful AI behaviors, such as reward hacking, deception, and sycophancy. The paper ultimately reaches a nuanced conclusion while also posing a clear challenge to a long-held principle of the AI world. There are some fascinating insights in the paper, which itself deals in a great deal of anthropomorphization. ("We see this research as an early step toward understanding the psychological makeup of AI models.") The researchers describe how Anthropic trains Claude to assume the character of a helpful AI assistant. "In some ways, we can think of the model like a method actor, who needs to get inside their character’s head in order to simulate them well." And because Claude "[emulates] characters with human-like traits," i