Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins/Futurism. Source: Ludovic Martin/AFP via Getty Images
Dario Amodei may boast many qualifications, but we didn’t know meteorologist was one of them.
This week, Anthropic’s CEO warned of an impending AI “tsunami” that will overwhelm human society as the technology overtakes human intelligence. And if you don’t believe him, he suggests, you’re just lying to yourself.
“It’s surprising to me that we are, in my view, so close to these models reaching human-level intelligence, and yet there is no widespread recognition in society of what is going to happen,” Amodei said in an interview with Indian investor Nikhil Kamath. case WTF is this podcast Released on Tuesday.
“It looks as if this tsunami is coming toward us, and it’s so close that we can see it on the horizon,” he predicted. “And yet people are coming up with these explanations, ‘Oh, it’s not really a tsunami…it’s just a trick of the light.'”
Amodei’s comments echo bold and often dire predictions made by AI industry leaders. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has often stated clearly that AI will eliminate all categories of jobs. Microsoft’s AI CEO warned that within a year and a half almost all office tasks will be automated by AI agents. Amodei infamously warned that AI would eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs. Although on the surface these seem like harmful predictions, they reinforce a fatalistic attitude toward technology, suggesting that it is inevitable that it will improve.
But if an AI tsunami is indeed coming, as Amodei claims, Anthropic has a big hand in it. The recent release of its cloud cowork AI agent sparked a massive selloff of software stocks, which reverberated throughout the stock market and wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars.
The company also heavily anthropomorphizes its AI models with stunts like sharing their “reflections.” on your own substackAnd the possibility constantly looms that it may already be conscious. It sets up the idea that technology is on the inevitable path to becoming an all-powerful artificial general intelligence, or the industry’s latest preferred nomenclature, AI “superintelligence.”
Tsunami or not, Amodei’s comments come during a very stormy moment for the company. This week, it abandoned one of its central security promises, saying it would not train or release AI models for which it could not guarantee adequate guardrails, weakening the company’s overall capabilities. raison d’etre. The decision was taken amid pressure from the Pentagon to ease restrictions on its use of AI Or face losing his $200 million defense contract.
Although Anthropic has positioned itself as the security-focused adult in the room, it now looks no less hypocritical than its competitors for pretending to care for the effects of technology on society.
“There has not been a proper realization of the risks of the technology, and certainly no action,” Amodei said during his recent podcast appearance.
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