Glossary
Virtue Ethics
A moral framework that focuses on character rather than rules or outcomes — asking what a person of good character would do.
Virtue ethics, rooted in Aristotle, shifts the ethical question from “what should I do?” to “what kind of agent should I be?” It emphasizes the development of character traits — honesty, courage, compassion, practical wisdom — that reliably guide good action across diverse situations. In AI development, virtue ethics offers a useful frame for thinking about model character: rather than trying to specify rules for every possible scenario, you might aim to imbue the model with values and dispositions that allow it to navigate novel situations well. Anthropic’s vision for Claude — a model that has genuinely internalized good values rather than merely following rules — draws on this tradition. For behavior architects, virtue-ethics thinking encourages focusing on what kind of “character” the model should have, not just what it should do in specific cases.