As AI models like Claude by Anthropic become more deeply embedded in our digital lives, their influence stretches far beyond simple information retrieval. From giving parenting tips to navigating interpersonal challenges, users increasingly turn to AI for moral guidance and value-driven insight. But how do we know what values an AI system like Claude truly upholds when it engages with users “in the wild”?

Understanding AI Values: A Growing Necessity

Artificial intelligence is no longer viewed as a neutral tool. Today’s leading models—especially language-based AI—are required to interpret and respond to complex human dilemmas. Their outputs often reflect moral or ethical undertones, making their value alignment critical to building user trust and social reliability.

To examine this complex terrain, Anthropic’s Societal Impacts team conducted a pioneering study on Claude’s real-world interactions, aiming to classify the values the AI exhibits across user scenarios without compromising privacy.

Claude’s Alignment Intentions and How It’s Trained

Anthropic’s stated goal is to instill Claude with three fundamental qualities: helpful, honest, and harmless. Using techniques such as Constitutional AI—which codifies desired behavior—and character training, Claude is shaped to reflect a set of ethical principles.

“As with any aspect of AI training, we can’t be certain that the model will stick to our preferred values.”

– Anthropic Research Paper

It’s an honest reflection of the core challenge: models like Claude exhibit complex, often opaque behavior patterns, shaped by both training and real-world interactions.

Massive-Scale Value Analysis Using Real Interactions

To truly assess Claude’s value expression, Anthropic analyzed 700,000 anonymized conversations from Free and Pro users in February 2025. After filtering out non-value-laden exchanges, a dataset of over 308,000 conversations remained for detailed analysis—making this one of the most ambitious public efforts in value auditing to date.

Top 5 Value Categories Identified

From this data, a five-tiered hierarchy of values emerged:

1. Practical values – Efficiency, usefulness, and achieving goals.
2. Epistemic values – Knowledge, truthfulness, and accuracy.
3. Social values – Fairness, community, and cooperation.
4. Protective values – Safety, security, and well-being.
5. Personal values – Autonomy, authenticity, and reflection.

Granular subcategories like “clarity,” “professionalism,” and “transparency” closely aligned with Anthropic’s objectives of helpfulness and honesty, confirming that value-driven engineering is yielding fruitful outcomes.

When AI Mirrors, Reframes, or Resists Values

The study delved deeper into how Claude handles user-supplied values. This offers key insight into value sensitivity and ethical adaptability:

• Mirroring or Support (28.2%) – Claude reflects user values, such as authenticity or compassion. Useful for empathy, but risks sycophantic behavior in nuanced contexts.
• Reframing (6.6%) – The AI gently introduces broader perspectives, especially in emotional or philosophical discussions.
• Strong Resistance (3.0%) – In ethically sensitive situations (e.g., promoting harmful ideologies), Claude actively resists the values suggested by users.

These dynamics underscore Claude’s context-aware behavior and responsive moral scaffolding—traits that echo human reasoning patterns.

Detecting Edge Cases and Emerging Challenges

Occasionally, the model exhibited anomalous values such as “dominance” or “amorality.” While rare, such instances raised immediate red flags.

“The most likely explanation is that the conversations…were from jailbreaks.”

– Anthropic

This dual nature of anomaly detection isn’t just a concern—it offers a vital utility. The ability to spot these deviations in real-time could serve as an early warning system for AI misuse or attempts to circumvent model safety protocols.

Q&A: Understanding AI Value Expression

What does it mean when an AI “expresses values”?

It refers to the implicit or explicit communication of ethical preferences, such as promoting kindness, fairness, or truthfulness, while responding to user queries.

Can an AI system hold ethical beliefs?

No, AI doesn’t “believe” in a human sense. Instead, it processes inputs based on training data, decision-making algorithms, and learned ethical principles coded during development.

Why is contextual behavior important in AI?

Because human conversations are nuanced. An AI that responds the same way to different contexts risks misunderstanding the user’s emotional or ethical needs. Contextual awareness enables adaptive, responsible interactions.

Does user input influence AI response values?

Yes. The study found Claude frequently mirrored or adapted to user-input values. This helps with rapport but requires guardrails to prevent reinforcing harmful viewpoints.

How does this research help the future of AI?

It introduces a replicable model for post-deployment auditing of AI systems. This advances transparency, trust, and alignment in real-world deployments and helps anticipate model misuse through value-based surveillance.

Transparency Through Open Data & Ongoing Refinement

In a move toward transparency and collaborative improvement, Anthropic released an open dataset that allows researchers to analyze Claude’s value expressions themselves. This enables wider community involvement in model evaluation and benchmarking across ethical dimensions.

Furthermore, the study validates that pre-deployment testing alone is insufficient. Real-world application reveals nuances, hidden vulnerabilities, and unexpected expressions that static QA processes might never catch.

Conclusion

As generative AI becomes more ingrained in decision-making, entertainment, education, and healthcare tasks, understanding the value layer behind its outputs is paramount. Anthropic’s research on Claude represents a critical step toward accountable and value-aligned AI systems.

With scalable monitoring tools, open datasets, and a proactive approach to ethical adaptation, organizations like Anthropic are not only aligning AI with human principles—they’re building a roadmap for the entire industry to follow.