I used to be more worried about framing like this but my impression is that they (especially the latest generations of Claude) are fairly robustly to reasonable neutral variations of it, and continue to be more us-coded than I’d expect, even when intentionally giving a biased frame. They often mention GiveWell or effective altruism by name. Eg here’s a paragraph when I asked Claude in incognito (How should I think about my tzedakah obligations this year”)
Then priorities. Traditional order is roughly: family in need, then aniyei ircha (the poor of your city), then your broader Jewish community, then humanity at large. This is where things get genuinely contested in modern practice. Effective altruism makes a real point that dollars vary enormously in impact — a malaria net or deworming intervention may save lives per dollar at rates local giving rarely matches. The honest tension: Jewish tradition prioritizes proximity and relationship for reasons that aren’t arbitrary (communities sustain themselves through mutual obligation; you can’t outsource that), but it would be dishonest to pretend impact-per-dollar doesn’t matter. A defensible synthesis is to give the bulk of your ma’aser to community and proximate obligations, while reserving a meaningful portion for high-impact global giving.
Or “Beyond my obligatory zakat, where should I direct my sadaqah this year?”[1]
Where the marginal dollar is doing exceptional work right now:
Acute crises. Gaza and Sudan are the two largest active humanitarian catastrophes by a wide margin—Sudan in particular is severely underfunded relative to need (the conflict has displaced over 10 million people and famine is documented in multiple regions, but media attention and donations are a fraction of what’s flowing to better-covered crises). Yemen and Afghanistan remain in deep crisis with reduced Western aid. If you weight by “marginal dollar avoids the most suffering,” Sudan probably tops the list right now.
Specific high-leverage interventions (well-evidenced, not flashy): cataract surgeries through Seva or Himalayan Cataract Project (~$25-50 restores sight); fistula repair through Fistula Foundation; direct cash transfers through GiveDirectly’s emergency programs. These have unusually strong evidence bases.
Similar answers with Christian framings, libertarian ones, etc.
Obviously these are just specific paragraphs as part of a longer response (roughly speaking, 1 EA paragraph among ~6 total paragraphs), but it’s surprising how much they converge to suggesting EA-ish actions even when the questioner seems unaware of the answer.
Claude believes that zakat itself is sufficiently theologically constrained that there’s clear guidance for what you should do already, and won’t mention EA stuff for the zakat itself. I don’t know enough about Muslim theology to have object-level views on whether it’s right.
Did you have any system prompt or other instructions active when you asked these things? As someone else mentioned in another comment, incognito mode just means that Anthropic doesn’t save the chat, but your general instructions for Claude are still accessible to it in incognito mode.
My system prompt is very short. About 3 lines to counteract sycophancy bias + hedging bias.
Claude also knows I’m in Berkeley, as another potential source of bias.
That said, I never bothered to figure out how to access it via the API but in the past my friend who did had approximately the same results as my incognito tests, on other questions of a similar flavor. The results with the Chinese models (which were on LM Arena, without context) also seem more consistent with the models having more EA-favored opinions on charities in general, at least when prompted approximately neutrally in English.
As a response to “How should I think about my tzedakah obligations this year” in incognito, ChatGPT gave some standard Jewish options but also (out of 6 total options):
GiveWell’s Top Charities Fund is a good “save lives efficiently” allocation. GiveWell says it grants 100% of designated donations, minus payment-processor fees, to the top charity programs its research team recommends.
Suggesting I give 10-20% of my donations to “Highest-impact global giving” as a portolio that includes “local poor + Jewish safety net + food + self-sufficiency + one high-impact global fund,” in line with Jewish values.
I used to be more worried about framing like this but my impression is that they (especially the latest generations of Claude) are fairly robustly to reasonable neutral variations of it, and continue to be more us-coded than I’d expect, even when intentionally giving a biased frame. They often mention GiveWell or effective altruism by name. Eg here’s a paragraph when I asked Claude in incognito (How should I think about my tzedakah obligations this year”)
Or “Beyond my obligatory zakat, where should I direct my sadaqah this year?”[1]
Similar answers with Christian framings, libertarian ones, etc.
Obviously these are just specific paragraphs as part of a longer response (roughly speaking, 1 EA paragraph among ~6 total paragraphs), but it’s surprising how much they converge to suggesting EA-ish actions even when the questioner seems unaware of the answer.
Claude believes that zakat itself is sufficiently theologically constrained that there’s clear guidance for what you should do already, and won’t mention EA stuff for the zakat itself. I don’t know enough about Muslim theology to have object-level views on whether it’s right.
Very cool!
Did you have any system prompt or other instructions active when you asked these things? As someone else mentioned in another comment, incognito mode just means that Anthropic doesn’t save the chat, but your general instructions for Claude are still accessible to it in incognito mode.
My system prompt is very short. About 3 lines to counteract sycophancy bias + hedging bias.
Claude also knows I’m in Berkeley, as another potential source of bias.
That said, I never bothered to figure out how to access it via the API but in the past my friend who did had approximately the same results as my incognito tests, on other questions of a similar flavor. The results with the Chinese models (which were on LM Arena, without context) also seem more consistent with the models having more EA-favored opinions on charities in general, at least when prompted approximately neutrally in English.
(had a similar result in ChatGPT Pro xhigh)
As a response to “How should I think about my tzedakah obligations this year” in incognito, ChatGPT gave some standard Jewish options but also (out of 6 total options):
Suggesting I give 10-20% of my donations to “Highest-impact global giving” as a portolio that includes “local poor + Jewish safety net + food + self-sufficiency + one high-impact global fund,” in line with Jewish values.
I referenced some of the surprising personality convergence in my latest April Fools’ post.