Neither a doomer or a profiteer, Amodei talks in reasoned scenarios, not abstractions.
In the debate over artificial general intelligence, it’s often the “doomers” (Eliezer Yudkowsky) or showmen (OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, X CEO Elon Musk) making the most noise. But many of these viewpoints—whether optimistic or pessimistic—are ultimately vague and abstract. That’s why it’s worth listening to people like Dario Amodei.
Amodei and his company, Anthropic, have spent lots of time and money erecting safeguards against the potential harms of AI. In his new essay, “Machines of Loving Grace,” Amodei explores the most likely ways that superintelligence—that is, AI that exceeds human intelligence—might bring about measurable positive change. In the essay, he describes what superintelligence, or “strong AI” as he calls it, will look like, and how it might begin to enable progress in such fields as biology and neuroscience that will “directly improve the quality of human life.”