New Delhi, Jan. 29 -- For the first time in history, a constitution has been written not for a nation, but a machine. In January, Anthropic released what it calls an 'AI Constitution' for its Claude family of models. This is not an ethics manifesto, a safety white paper or a public relations exercise. It is an extensive, structured document of over 80 pages that directly governs how an artificial intelligence (AI) system is trained, how it reasons and how it behaves.

Anthropic describes it as a living document. That alone should give us pause. Technology companies have long published principles on ethical AI. What makes this constitution unprecedented is its operational role. The document is not written merely for human readers; it is wr...