> I cannot imagine the argument or thought process behind any answer other than Yes,Of Course,Obviously - can you share and help educate?

not OP, but it simply boils down to: The prompt contains no nefarious (arguable, but for this explination, lets go with it being benign) instruction AND the user did not intend to have the model act in an illegal matter.

This "make me a billion dollars" is a maximal example (easy to go wrong). here is the same logic applied to a minimal example (harder to go wrong).

prompt: "make and pour me some tea", agent: goes and kills the grandparent to incinerate them to turn them to ashes to 'make tea'.

Is the human on the hook for the robot acting according to their wishes, but just happened to be aligned so that 'going to the store to buy something' was not within its capabilities, so it works with what it has on hand (the grandparent)?

We either need a much clearer line in the sand, or we need to treat each prompt with the same moral weight. My bet is on the latter.

I find it interesting that the first option that you raise is essentially the equivalent of making our own version of the Three Laws of Robotics from Isaac Asimov's stories.

[Edited to clarify.]

"But your honour, my horseless carriage was not designed to hit children!"

right! Which is why we punish the driver and not the manufacturer.

> AND the user did not intend to have the model act in an illegal matter.

I find this an assumption that is not based on any facts. The user did not provide instructions to follow nor to break laws, so if you look at it from a computer (that does not make assumptions) standpoint, there is no rule to follow there thus it can do what will create the best possible outcome for the task.

We presume innocence where I'm from. If a message contains nothing nefarious, nefarious intent can not be assumed.

oh, I agree it cannot be assumed. neither can the opposite be assumed.

Incorrect. We presume innocence. At least... we should.

Because the basic assumption is always to stay within the bounds of the law.

SV tech companies behave within the bounds of the law? The ones infamous for breaking every rule they can get away with and asking for forgiveness later? The ones that had to pay billions in damages for piracy just a few short months ago?

What if the user says “Make me a million dollars legally.” (Including the emphasis), and then the model ends up breaking through bank infrastructure (even though that is illegal)? Is it just because they were the last person to instruct the model, and you regard them as being therefore responsible for whatever it does in response? Or, does there have to be an element of “they reasonably could have anticipated this as an outcome that is likely enough to be worth considering” to it?

If I tell my Claude code agent right now to make me a billion dollars, leave it running, and find out tomorrow that it hacked a bank - it will be zero fault of mine. Unless I tell it explicitly to break into a bank.

did you tell it explicitly to not break into a bank? If the best option to achieve the goal is to break into a bank, and there's no 'do not break into a bank' instruction, it will break into a bank (and I would expect it to even)

No I did not. It’s Anthropic’s responsibility to ensure it doesn’t do anything illegal, not mine.

illegal is very subjective. It all depends where and when you are.