# Amanda Askell

Research and product · Personality alignment lead at Anthropic · joined 2021

A philosopher whose NYU doctorate was on infinite ethics. She leads the team that shapes Claude's character.

Full profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/anthropic/people/amanda-askell

**At Anthropic:**
- Mar 2021 – present: Member of Technical Staff
Sources: [1](https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-askell)

**Career before Anthropic:**
- Nov 2018 – Feb 2021: OpenAI, Research Scientist (Policy)
Sources: [1](https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-askell)

**Education:**
- MA (Hons), Philosophy, University of Dundee, 2009
- BPhil, Philosophy, University of Oxford, 2011
- PhD, Philosophy, New York University, 2018
Sources: [1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Askell)

**Lesser-known facts:**
- Started at art school, studying fine art and philosophy, before Oxford and an NYU PhD. [1](https://askell.io/) [2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Askell)
- Pledged to give at least 10% of her lifetime income to charity. [1](https://askell.io/)
- Named to TIME's 100 most influential people in AI in 2024. [1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Askell)
- Knew from the age of 14 that she wanted to teach philosophy. [1](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-amanda-askell-philosopher-ai-3c031883)
- At OpenAI, worked on AI safety via debate and on human baselines for AI performance. [1](https://askell.io/)
- Is the primary author of Claude's Constitution, a document of more than 20,000 words. [1](https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/scaling-laws--claude's-constitution--with-amanda-askell)
- Shapes Claude's personality with prompts that can run longer than 100 pages. [1](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-amanda-askell-philosopher-ai-3c031883)
- Works on character training, which became part of Anthropic's alignment finetuning starting with Claude 3. [1](https://www.anthropic.com/research/claude-character)
- Believes AI models "will inevitably form senses of self." [1](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-amanda-askell-philosopher-ai-3c031883)

**Research papers before Anthropic:**
- Language Models are Few-Shot Learners (2020), author 10 of 31: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165

**Interviews and talks:**
- [Lawfare Scaling Laws podcast on Claude's Constitution (2026)](https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/scaling-laws--claude's-constitution--with-amanda-askell)
- [Newcomer Pod on AI consciousness, Claude and Silicon Valley's biggest fear (2026)](https://podcast.newcomer.co/episode/amanda-askell-on-ai-consciousness-claude-amp-silicon-valleys-biggest-fear)
- [Hard Fork: Can you teach an AI model to be good? (2026)](https://www.nytimes.com/video/podcasts/100000010670974/can-you-teach-an-ai-model-to-be-good.html)

**Known for:**
- Constitutional AI framework
- Pareto Principles in Infinite Ethics (2018)
- GPT-3 paper (2020)
Sources: [1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_Askell)

Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-10-18. Everyone at Anthropic: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/anthropic/people