If someone watched/memorized how Qwen gave birth 3 years ago, the debut model itself was previewed/announced as a personalized LLM. For half a year, I’m responsible for its character in 14b size, also as the suggested model for game, edu, and smart devices. I even invited one of the most trending stand-up comedians/professors to be part of the post-training /alignment corpus. However, at that time, people didn't realize RL could scale up like today’s~~~
A good piece. I think Chinese labs are just later here, with a less philosophical group at the core of building — like ai safety researchers built the generational AI companies here — but I’m working on some stuff showing Chinese labs have interest in refining this area. Which is great for research & safety.
> You may not have the exact methodology, but you have the outcomes of those methodologies.
It's also worth noting that Anthropic's Evan Hubinger was the last author on the open source replication of character training! Not quite the same as constitution, but not that different either
(Incidentally, Nathan Lambert was the third author)
Kai Williams with a deep lore... I agree that character and constitution are muddy concepts right now in my thinking. More research is needed, and I want to get better at talking about these concepts as distinct.
Well I sat next to the first author of that paper when I was doing AI safety research. So I should know a little bit about that haha.
My sense is that Anthropic’s character training started with a constititution of about 9 statements or so, then used some techniques to instill those more simple statements in. Eventually, they’ve gotten more sophisticated though on the size and the content of the document. But I think of constitution as just a more holistic way of approaching character training rather than something fundamentally differnet.
Chinese tech forums and Bilibili comment sections have a pattern worth noting: the most common criticism of domestic AI models is not benchmark performance but what gets called 没个性 -- no personality. Chinese users actively complain about blandness more than Western users do. The demand for character exists. The supply question is whether it can survive a benchmark cycle where moving from flagship 3.5 to 3.6 to 3.7 in three consecutive months is the dominant competitive signal -- and where the character investment has no clear delta to show for it.
so interesting!! re: Doubao, my somewhat flippant opinion is that it might represent a different race to the bottom on character - the cute-little-girl thing is frankly very uncomfortable, but sells.
The Chinese labs don't have an Amanda because, as they fundamentally don't overindex on soft power, aka perception of goodness in the mindshare of the public, theorizing on the future almost feels frivolous as opposed to earning the rightful place in the stack. It's why they don't prioritize comms and PR or understand it in the limited sense of announcementa/influencer strategy/controlled narrative. Build in public is fine, but think in public feels ominous. After all, how does one put a KPI to philosophizing?
I agree with you, but I also think this represents the single most important asymmetric advantage available to Chinese AI right now. There's a way to make character and constitution feel like another step in the technical foundation of a great model and not some Berkeley beanbag philosophizing activity. I think having someone embrace this is inevitable. It's just a question of who will take the leap first.
If someone watched/memorized how Qwen gave birth 3 years ago, the debut model itself was previewed/announced as a personalized LLM. For half a year, I’m responsible for its character in 14b size, also as the suggested model for game, edu, and smart devices. I even invited one of the most trending stand-up comedians/professors to be part of the post-training /alignment corpus. However, at that time, people didn't realize RL could scale up like today’s~~~
Oh my god, I could talk to you about this for a hundred years. I'm dying to learn more. Drop me a note. I would really really like to talk about this.
A good piece. I think Chinese labs are just later here, with a less philosophical group at the core of building — like ai safety researchers built the generational AI companies here — but I’m working on some stuff showing Chinese labs have interest in refining this area. Which is great for research & safety.
> You may not have the exact methodology, but you have the outcomes of those methodologies.
It's also worth noting that Anthropic's Evan Hubinger was the last author on the open source replication of character training! Not quite the same as constitution, but not that different either
(Incidentally, Nathan Lambert was the third author)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.01689
Kai Williams with a deep lore... I agree that character and constitution are muddy concepts right now in my thinking. More research is needed, and I want to get better at talking about these concepts as distinct.
Reading the paper now, thank you friend :)
Well I sat next to the first author of that paper when I was doing AI safety research. So I should know a little bit about that haha.
My sense is that Anthropic’s character training started with a constititution of about 9 statements or so, then used some techniques to instill those more simple statements in. Eventually, they’ve gotten more sophisticated though on the size and the content of the document. But I think of constitution as just a more holistic way of approaching character training rather than something fundamentally differnet.
Chinese tech forums and Bilibili comment sections have a pattern worth noting: the most common criticism of domestic AI models is not benchmark performance but what gets called 没个性 -- no personality. Chinese users actively complain about blandness more than Western users do. The demand for character exists. The supply question is whether it can survive a benchmark cycle where moving from flagship 3.5 to 3.6 to 3.7 in three consecutive months is the dominant competitive signal -- and where the character investment has no clear delta to show for it.
Great post!
Thanks V! Back in SF Saturday let’s hang out I miss ya
so interesting!! re: Doubao, my somewhat flippant opinion is that it might represent a different race to the bottom on character - the cute-little-girl thing is frankly very uncomfortable, but sells.
I don’t think I’m the right person to write about this, but I do think it’s super interesting and deserves a lot more thought than I’ve seen so far.
The Chinese labs don't have an Amanda because, as they fundamentally don't overindex on soft power, aka perception of goodness in the mindshare of the public, theorizing on the future almost feels frivolous as opposed to earning the rightful place in the stack. It's why they don't prioritize comms and PR or understand it in the limited sense of announcementa/influencer strategy/controlled narrative. Build in public is fine, but think in public feels ominous. After all, how does one put a KPI to philosophizing?
I agree with you, but I also think this represents the single most important asymmetric advantage available to Chinese AI right now. There's a way to make character and constitution feel like another step in the technical foundation of a great model and not some Berkeley beanbag philosophizing activity. I think having someone embrace this is inevitable. It's just a question of who will take the leap first.
It would be an idiosyncratic advantage, and the one who gets it will leapfrog past all the rest.