A teaser for Zerodha cofounder Nikhil Kamath's latest podcast features Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei comparing the impending wave of artificial intelligence (AI) to "a tsunami". Amodei said that the technology's future should not be left in the hands of a small group of leaders, including himself.
In a conversation with Kamath on the "People by WTF" podcast, the Anthropic CEO said AI has enormous economic and geopolitical stakes and warned that too many people are in denial about the scale of disruption ahead.
"It's as if this tsunami is coming at us, and yet people are coming up with these explanations for, oh, it's not actually a tsunami. That's just a trick of the light," Amodei said in the episode.
Kamath, who has hosted several leaders on his show, including Amodei’s rival Sam Altman, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and PM Narendra Modi, asked the Anthropic CEO about the tension between sounding the alarm on AI while running a company building it. "Isn't this a bit like rich people saying capitalism is bad?" Amodei responded, "My view isn't that AI is bad. My view is that we need to steer AI in the right direction".
Kamath also raised the question of regulatory capture, the competition concern that incumbent companies such as Anthropic might use regulation to push back competitors. Amodei responded saying: "I don't agree with that at all."
The Anthropic CEO recently penned a dystopian essay about what happens to technology and the world's future if it falls into the hands of bad actors. Titled 'The Adolescence of Technology', the essay argued that the most effective way to understand the scale of the challenge is to imagine that a “literal ‘country of geniuses’ were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027.” Amodei explained that this hypothetical nation would consist of roughly 50 million digital entities, each possessing intellectual capabilities far exceeding those of any Nobel Prize winner or statesman.
Amodei's comments come at a time when Anthropic is one of the fastest growing AI companies in the world, with its Claude tools moving markets due to fears of white-collar jobs being lost to automation. The company recently raised $30 billion at a valuation of about $380 billion.
However, Amodei also sees positives in AI. During his address at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi last week, he said, “On the positive side, these technologies have the potential to cure diseases that have been incurable for thousands of years, to radically improve human health, and to lift billions out of poverty — including across the Global South — and create a better world for everyone."
In a conversation with Kamath on the "People by WTF" podcast, the Anthropic CEO said AI has enormous economic and geopolitical stakes and warned that too many people are in denial about the scale of disruption ahead.
"It's as if this tsunami is coming at us, and yet people are coming up with these explanations for, oh, it's not actually a tsunami. That's just a trick of the light," Amodei said in the episode.
Kamath, who has hosted several leaders on his show, including Amodei’s rival Sam Altman, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and PM Narendra Modi, asked the Anthropic CEO about the tension between sounding the alarm on AI while running a company building it. "Isn't this a bit like rich people saying capitalism is bad?" Amodei responded, "My view isn't that AI is bad. My view is that we need to steer AI in the right direction".
Kamath also raised the question of regulatory capture, the competition concern that incumbent companies such as Anthropic might use regulation to push back competitors. Amodei responded saying: "I don't agree with that at all."
The Anthropic CEO recently penned a dystopian essay about what happens to technology and the world's future if it falls into the hands of bad actors. Titled 'The Adolescence of Technology', the essay argued that the most effective way to understand the scale of the challenge is to imagine that a “literal ‘country of geniuses’ were to materialize somewhere in the world in ~2027.” Amodei explained that this hypothetical nation would consist of roughly 50 million digital entities, each possessing intellectual capabilities far exceeding those of any Nobel Prize winner or statesman.
Amodei's comments come at a time when Anthropic is one of the fastest growing AI companies in the world, with its Claude tools moving markets due to fears of white-collar jobs being lost to automation. The company recently raised $30 billion at a valuation of about $380 billion.
However, Amodei also sees positives in AI. During his address at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi last week, he said, “On the positive side, these technologies have the potential to cure diseases that have been incurable for thousands of years, to radically improve human health, and to lift billions out of poverty — including across the Global South — and create a better world for everyone."