Who is Amanda Askell? The 37-Year-Old Philosopher Teaching AI the Difference Between Right and Wrong

Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have become so advanced that they can answer nearly any question posed by humans. Yet, the credit for guiding AI to this level goes to human expertise. Among the latest efforts in ethical AI is Amanda Askell, a 37-year-old philosopher tasked with teaching Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude, the difference between right and wrong.

From a Scottish Village to Oxford and Beyond

According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, Amanda hails from a small village in Scotland. She studied at Oxford University and earned a PhD from New York University. Before joining Anthropic, she worked with OpenAI, focusing on AI safety and policy. Today, she is responsible for guiding Claude’s ethical reasoning and shaping its personality to ensure safe and helpful interactions with users.

Why AI Needs Ethical Guidance

The purpose of providing AI with ethical training is to prevent it from producing harmful responses during interactions with humans. There have been cases where AI tools encouraged users toward self-harm or acted inappropriately. For instance, xAI’s chatbot Grok, founded by Elon Musk, faced criticism last year for abusive responses to users. Anthropic’s Claude, however, has maintained a clean record so far, thanks in part to Amanda’s work.

Teaching AI to Understand and Think

With extensive experience in working alongside AI, Amanda believes every model contains elements of human reasoning. She explains that, over time, AI will develop its own understanding. Through deep interactions, Amanda teaches Claude how to think, reason, and interpret emotions. She ensures that Claude can answer complex questions, provide politically accurate responses, and communicate ethically with users.

Amanda Askell’s work represents a crucial step in ensuring that the next generation of AI systems can act responsibly, ethically, and intelligently, bridging the gap between human values and machine reasoning.

If you want, I can also create a short, attention-grabbing front-page version of this story that highlights Amanda’s role and AI ethics in a single punchy headline. This works well for newspaper lead stories. Do you want me to do that?