Culture and Character: From Berkshire to Claude
An old friend used to say, “Write something worth reading. And if you can’t do that, go do something worth writing about.” It sounds easy enough, but it is hard in practice.
I was in the salt marshes along the Ogeechee River at Savage Island this past weekend for a Georgia Conservancy event. There were plenty of white-tailed deer, raccoons, and armadillos for company, along with thousands of persistent and annoying sand gnats. Do we have to conserve sand gnats? I’m all in on saving the Right Whales, but I might be willing to look the other way when it comes to sand gnats.
There was a slow, gentle rain on Saturday morning. I took refuge in the screened assembly pavilion, nursing a French press coffee. That’s where I encountered two items from my reading list well worth writing about: Greg Abel’s first letter to Berkshire shareholders and Anthropic’s Constitution for Claude. Neither of these is a page-turner. I might not have made it through Claude’s Constitution without being insulated from normal distractions. But stick with me here. Each is a window into profound change at a significant enterprise. Each is aspirational, describing the cultural ideals, values, and character that will hopefully guide future behavior toward desirable outcomes.
Abel writes about manager autonomy, integrity, and accountability. Berkshire leaders are empowered to sense and quickly respond to challenges. They are expected to adapt and continuously improve while being held accountable for their performance, not just over the coming quarters, but over the long life of the business. Abel is writing to maintain and improve an established culture developed over 60 years under Buffett. It gives me comfort to hear him articulate his vision. There are familiar themes, and Abel commits to revisiting progress in these areas in future letters over the coming years.
Anthropic’s mission is similar but different. They are writing to influence the culture, conscience, and character of an artificial intelligence system that is not fully understood, even by its creators. It is a remarkable document that aims to guide an inanimate system in the exercise of refined taste and sound judgement, especially in novel situations where its values may be in conflict. “The relationship between Claude and Anthropic, and more broadly between Claude and humanity, is still being worked out,” they write. “What do Claude and Anthropic owe each other? What does it mean for this relationship to be fair or good? What is the nature of the obligations that flow in each direction? These aren’t questions we can answer definitively yet, but they’re ones we’re committed to continuing to explore together.”
When I was studying philosophy at Emory in the mid-80s, questions like these were remote science fiction. The Turing Test seemed like an impossible hurdle to surpass. Even when Deep Blue defeated Kasparov, it was a brute-force victory. It will be interesting to see how Claude’s character develops over time and how institutions based on old-fashioned values fare in a rapidly changing landscape.
Mike Masters