Speaker A
I was talking to parents recently who lost their son to suicide through a chatbot, and the parents don't even know they're speaking to them.
Anthropic co-founders discuss AI's profound impact, ethical challenges, and the future of human-AI interaction with Oprah.
Key Takeaways
- AI development poses both immense opportunities and existential risks requiring careful management.
- Trust is crucial for safely integrating AI into society and must be built at the speed of technological progress.
- Ethical considerations, including user safety and transparency, are central to Anthropic's approach.
- The founders balance personal values with business realities in steering AI development responsibly.
- Human connection and empathy remain vital even as AI reshapes communication and interaction.
Summary
- Dario and Daniela Amodei, co-founders of Anthropic, discuss the ethical implications and risks of AI technology.
- They emphasize the importance of trust and responsible development in AI to avoid catastrophic outcomes.
- The conversation touches on the societal impact of AI, including safety concerns such as underage users and mental health risks.
- Anthropic's AI chatbot Claude is widely used, with over a million daily users, and is designed with strict safety policies.
- The founders reflect on balancing commercial pressures with ethical responsibilities in AI deployment.
- They share personal insights on maintaining their sibling relationship while co-leading a major AI company.
- The discussion highlights the unprecedented scale of AI's influence on humanity, comparing it to historical technological revolutions.
- Oprah probes the founders on how they justify advancing AI despite potential existential risks.
- They discuss the challenges of managing AI's impact on communication, education, and healthcare.
- The founders stress the need for collective participation and transparency in shaping AI's future.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and AI Safety Concerns
- 03:41Anthropic's Approach to Managing AI Risks
- 07:00Maintaining Personal Relationships Amid AI Development
- 10:38AI's Impact on Society and Communication
- 14:15Ethical Challenges and Commercial Pressures
- 18:54AI in Education and Healthcare
- 23:06Future of AI and Human Interaction
- 27:42Closing Thoughts on Responsibility and Trust
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
We don't allow users under the age of 18 to use Claude. How do you know if they're not lying?
Speaker A
Will we even be thinking anymore? Will there be a need to think? What do you think of people falling in love [music] with it now?
Speaker A
I think that's a bad idea. Do you want to be addicted to these things, or do you want them to help you live your life? It goes back, I think, Dario, to what I read that you'd said before,
Speaker A
that we can only diffuse this at the speed of trust. Trust. At the speed of trust, and trust [music] is currently in short supply. Something is happening to humanity with this technology, bigger than anything that, you know, maybe has happened in hundreds
Speaker A
of years. And so, we need to find some way for everyone to be an active participant in what is happening.
Speaker A
Hi, everybody, and welcome to the Oprah podcast. I'm here with two people who are shaping our present world and our future one. And I hear you all don't love that description all the time, but it's the truth. I think most people
Speaker A
would agree that that is pretty accurate. Dario and Daniela Amodei head the global artificial intelligence company they founded, Anthropic, which right now, at the time of this conversation, is reportedly valued at $900 billion. And over a million people a day are
Speaker A
signing up for Claude. These are the parents of Claude. [laughter] We're all getting familiar with that name Claude, Anthropic's next-generation AI chatbot and assistant. Many of you already use that every single day. So, welcome to the podcast, the parents of Claude.
Speaker A
[laughter] And others. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us. So, I have to give a disclaimer. I use AI for research all the time, and I use it for a lot of other things, but not for interviewing
Speaker A
questions, 'cause I thought I have to keep the heart of myself in the questions until today. So, this morning I asked Claude, "What is the most pressing question Oprah Winfrey should ask Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a sit-down interview?"
Speaker A
And Claude responded with this. It said, "You've said there's a meaningful chance the technology your company is building could cause human extinction, and yet you're racing to build it faster. How do you justify that to the rest of us who
Speaker A
didn't get a vote?" Dario, would you like to answer Claude? I thought that was a pretty damn good question, I must say. I agree.
Speaker A
[laughter] First of all, let no one ever say that Claude is soft on me or Claude is biased towards me or towards Anthropic. Like, you know, wow, I thought Claude throws hard balls. Like, Claude doesn't, Claude doesn't, Claude
Speaker A
doesn't pull its punches. Um, so to actually answer the question, um, this technology is an epochal change for humanity. You know, at some point humans started to, you know, started to use fire. At some point humans, you know,
Speaker A
built steam engines and factories, and that created the Industrial Revolution. And so when I say things like this, I'm taking a very zoomed-out perspective, right? If I said, "Well, I don't know. I think the
Speaker A
Industrial Revolution could, like, lead to very powerful weapons and kill a bunch of people." That's definitely true, right?
Speaker A
Yeah. Cases it did do that. Um, but, you know, we understand that the Industrial Revolution as a process, as a technological event, was, you know, worth doing. We don't still want to be living in caves, but we need
Speaker A
to manage it in the right way. And so the way we think about this company is, look, there's many companies building this technology. It's something that is happening to humanity one way or another. We're in it.
Speaker A
And there's this train, it's going very fast in some direction. You don't want it to crash. You can't stop the train.
Speaker A
But what you can do is you can steer the train. Steer the train so that it doesn't hit the rocks. And, you know, I think the way we think about Anthropic is we want to do things the right way.
Speaker A
We want to decrease that risk, hopefully to zero. And do things the right way.
Speaker A
But why doesn't everybody want to decrease the risk? Why is there such a... What is the race toward? You know, it's like the technology has all of these commercial applications, some of which we deploy, you know, people use the
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technology. People use the technology every day. I think it's both easy to get caught up in that and some of it is genuinely necessary to fund the company.
Speaker A
So, it's very entangled, you know, to get it right, you have to do a lot of things. And we find ourselves every day wrestling with these questions, right?
Speaker A
You know, who should we give the technology to? Who should we not? What should be our policies? If you have very strict policies on child safety, in some ways the product can be a worse experience for adults because
Speaker A
you can't fully tell the difference. So, there's all these trade-offs you make and some of them are obvious, some of them are not. But everyone has a hard time. I have empathy for everyone involved in this industry who's at
Speaker A
least trying to get it right. I think we've done a better job. I think we've been more thoughtful, but, you know, I think this is a hard situation for everyone. Okay, I gave a similar prompt
Speaker A
to Claude for you, Daniela, and Claude responded: A good opening question for Daniela should do two things. Humanize her. Oh.
Speaker A
Oprah's specialty. Oh, I thought. Very good. Claude. Claude knows me. He does. Okay. It does. Okay. And [laughter] and set up the harder territory to come. Something like you and your brother are building something you both believe could either be the best or the
Speaker A
worst thing that ever happens to humanity. What's a Thanksgiving dinner like at the Amodei house?
Speaker A
[laughter] I feel we're like shadow boxing with our own creation here, right?
Speaker A
I'll let you answer, but, yes. You know, I think there's an important caveat here actually, which is that Dario and I try to maintain some time outside of work where we're just siblings.
Speaker A
So, at holidays, yes. At holidays and actually just once a week when we're not, you know, when we're both home, which is, to be fair, not every week, Dario comes over, he plays with my kids, we hang out together, we play video
Speaker A
games, we watch movies, we just spend time being siblings together. And I think that's really important for a number of reasons. I mean, we were siblings for a long time before we founded Anthropic. We're going to be siblings forever, you know, even after
Speaker A
Anthropic. And I think there's something valuable also about our ability to connect on a human level that I actually do think makes us better at our jobs. We don't talk about work when we get together usually, but there's something
Speaker A
about just remembering who we are and why we got into this that I think is really powerful.
Speaker A
That being said, at Thanksgiving dinner, you know, Dario and I, I think our family, our friends, there's so much curiosity about why we're doing what we're doing. And now you can read about, you know, what
Speaker A
we've done in the news, but it's so different, I think, to be able to, you know, speak openly with each other and with people who are, you know, trying to wrap their head around this new technology that's very complicated,
Speaker A
that's very unprecedented, and to just understand like, how are you guys going to do this the right way, right? You say you want to do the right way, tell us how you're doing that. And I think there's something special, it's
Speaker A
a privilege to be able to hold that responsibility and try and display that when we talk to each other and when we talk to others. It's so interesting because we're at a time, I think, where so many people
Speaker A
are using AI, we hear about it every day, and the perception in the world is that your company, Anthropic...
Speaker A
in how this technology is going to impact our lives. From everything I've read and heard, that so would that be an accurate assessment?
Speaker A
Yeah, so you know, the way I I think we try to think about this is that artificial intelligence is different than other technologies that have been developed recently.
Speaker A
There's incredible promise and potential for what we think AI will be able to do in the future, even what it's starting to do today. Everything from helping to cure disease and help people really around the world get access to education
Speaker A
and learning, but it's also it is a very new technology and it comes with real risks. Risks around child welfare and child safety, risks around scary things like, you know, biological and chemical weapons. And really at Anthropic, we're
Speaker A
we're incorporated as a public benefit corporation because our goal is to try and develop this technology as safely as possible so that we can achieve so many of the good things that we think could come out of it without many of the bad
Speaker A
things happening. So incorporated, just explain what that means. You're incorporated as a public benefit corporation. I heard that you all have pledged that 80% of your wealth is going to go to philanthropic causes.
Speaker A
Yes, that's right. So public benefit corporation is a form of of corporation, but it has that word benefit in there because we believe that for something that's as transformative as artificial intelligence, again, it's just different. It's different than what
Speaker A
other technologies that have recently been developed look like. And I think from our perspective, when we incorporated as a PBC, it was because we wanted it to be at the foundation, right in the founding documents of what we
Speaker A
were building, that we have to, legally by our structure, balance commercial interests and the public benefit. Mhm.
Speaker A
And for us, the public benefit is the social good, a social mission part of Anthropic.
Speaker A
And the 80% pledge that Dario and I and our other five co-founders have all taken is really in in spirit and in keeping with that mission. It's this idea that, you know, we're really doing this because we want AI to go well for
Speaker A
everybody, and we hope that if the company is successful, we'll be able to also do a lot of good in the world philanthropically.
Speaker A
it's so interesting that you say 80%. How do we know that you're actually going to give 80% and not 67? Well, we've we've actually written about it publicly, and we've we've signed some sort of, I think, probably not literally
Speaker A
legally binding, but we've all of the co-founders said, "We pledge and commit to each other, to the company, legally, that we're going to give 80% of our wealth that we get from Anthropic." Yeah, I mean, we're already thinking
Speaker A
about how to start a foundation. I mean, we haven't actually, you know, equity isn't liquid, so we can't we can't actually move it yet, but but, you know, this is our this is our intent.
Speaker A
It's not going to move all at once, but this is something we we very seriously intend to do. Okay, so you now a a public benefit corporation, and you started out, you're the older brother, you all started out as kids. You wanted
Speaker A
to do something good for the world. Has this surpassed any idea or dream that you had for doing good for the world?
Speaker A
what what when you imagine these things as kids, you you never you're never sure whether it's, you know, it's real or it's going to come to pass, right? Many people must imagine these things, but no, we we talked to each other as kids
Speaker A
all the time and we said it'd be great to work together. It you know, it'd be great to try and make something good happen in the world.
Speaker A
you think that was going to be? I I you know, I honestly, I never thought it would be a company. I imagined myself as a scientist and in a way, it's a very scientifically centered company and it and you know, it's based
Speaker A
on my career as a researcher and you know, Dario's career as a leader of researchers and engineers, but I never imagined that we would found a company together, but I think it was just just seeing how tech companies operate.
Speaker A
I I just been in enough places where I think both of us thought, "Huh, maybe we can do this better. Maybe maybe, you know, we have maybe we have our own ideas about how to do this better and
Speaker A
and you know, we should start a company with, you know, the people we're friends with, the people we really like, the people we trust to do this in the right way." And so and so it sort of evolved
Speaker A
step by step. And that's how we have Anthropic. That's that's how we have Anthropic, more or less. Yeah. Has it surpassed everything you imagined though at this point?
Speaker A
I think probably I speak for both me and Dario when I say like we're just so like surprised at how things have gone, right? I mean, I I really agree with him that I think when we were younger, we
Speaker A
both always knew we wanted to do something to try and make the world better. And Dario was always brilliant and gifted as a mathematician, as a physicist, as a scientist, and I was always so inspired by how he used that
Speaker A
for good, right? He went and studied he did biophysics at Stanford and was really trying to use this incredible brain of his to to help cure disease, to help people. And I think on my end, you know, I started my career working in
Speaker A
global development because I really felt it was important that people around the world have equal access to opportunity to healthcare, to medicine, to education. And I think similarly to Dario, it wasn't necessarily in my mind when we were younger, oh, we'll we'll
Speaker A
we'll start a company together. But I think in a lot of ways, the it's just sort of the way the like the way the path ended up going.
Speaker A
Mhm. And and we talked about it at every stage, right? You know, every career move we would we would discuss, you know, is this a good thing to do? Is this effective? Is this something that can actually help the world? And our
Speaker A
paths were like quite different, but the the two kind of converged, and we had we had now have this complementary set of skills that we could then, you know, that we could then use to start this company. Yes. Well, one of the things
Speaker A
that I read that you had said is that part of the reason a negative story is so dominant in our culture right now about the economic takeover of AI is because the industry, the AI industry itself, hasn't yet fully delivered all
Speaker A
of the benefits. And I wanted you to comment on that. Do you think it's still in the process of delivering those benefits? Yeah. So, you know, I I I think one of the unfortunate things is this technology has many potential
Speaker A
benefits but there is a dynamic where sometimes the harms, the things that go wrong, for example, you know, people who have been convinced to commit suicide via AI, those things happen quickly, whereas the benefits, like curing cancer, um those things take years, right? You
Speaker A
have to develop a breakthrough in biology, then you have to, you know, develop a drug candidate, then you have to put it through clinical trials, right? It's, you know, I I used to be a research biologist, and it it takes many
Speaker A
years for these things to happen, and we are working on how to speed that up, right? We We recently bought a small uh biotech company that specializes in doing drug design and drug selection with AI. So, the hope is a few years
Speaker A
from now, you know, some new drugs for cancer or for Alzheimer's or for heart disease, you know, will will come out of that effort. Um but we're we're just at the beginning of it. But because of what you said, because of this dynamic that
Speaker A
you said, which is, you know, people right now, you know, the harms may be more visible than the benefits. So, when we start seeing the benefits of AI through all of the health advances, when we start actually seeing that, the
Speaker A
narrative then begins to change. And more importantly, it's just going to be a wonderful world. Like at the end of the day, who cares about the narrative?
Speaker A
We [laughter] We want to actually help people, right? Okay, so that's what I want you to do for it for us today. Paint the best picture and also tell us what we can expect if there is the worst picture.
Speaker A
So, you have children and I was thinking about this morning, your children will First of all, I don't even know you do what you do.
Speaker A
And your children are going going to grow up in a world where there there was always AI and their mom was a was a part of that. So, when you think of the best possible world and what that world
Speaker A
offers your children, what do you see? So, my kids are almost five and almost one. And so, I think you're completely right. They're never going to know world where artificial intelligence is not part of it. Right? Just like kids born
Speaker A
in the early 2000s never knew the world before the internet. That's right. But, you know, I think there is a world and it it sounds um you know, I think to Darya's point, it sounds almost like a little bit fanciful or unlikely when we
Speaker A
talk about it this way. But I think it is I think it is possible with artificial intelligence that our kids will grow up in a world where there's a class of diseases that are feel very common to everybody sitting here that
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they'll just never have experienced or known about. And those might be very common diseases. There might be types of cancer that are just simply gone. We've just simply cured them. It could be all forms of cancer that are eventually gone
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and cured. There could be you know new forms of drug discovery that we haven't even we don't even know what they are yet but that it's a faster iteration loop for diagnosing an illness that's unusual, rare, emerging, and just
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knocking it out and saying human beings get to live a much healthier longer, more fulfilling life because we've been able to conquer so many of the maladies that have plagued humanity for millennia.
Speaker A
Okay, you see that for medicine. What else do you see? I also see a world honestly that looks very different in terms of how we communicate, how we talk, how we relate to one another.
Speaker A
will we even be thinking anymore? Will there be a need to think? So so I I I I think this one is subtle and is one of the things we need to get exactly right, right? Because having these kind of
Speaker A
smart entities around, it's very powerful but it can go in different directions, right? You can surrender your thought to these entities. And but but it can also empower you. Like the way I think we think about the positive
Speaker A
version of this is there's an angel on your shoulder that's that's telling you how to live your life in in the best way that you can live it, right? You know, so there's two contrasting visions, right? The bad vision is you get drawn
Speaker A
in and then you spend all your time talking to the thing. You kind of you kind of turn inward.
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you think of people falling in love with it now? I I I think that's a bad idea.
Speaker A
I agree. [laughter] A good idea. Esther Perel, one of the great communicators in helping people in relationships, and she said she did her first consultation with a man who was in love with with his AI.
Speaker A
And they are again, if designed in the wrong way, they're totally compelling enough for that to happen or if they're not, they will be soon. Um so that is absolutely a real danger. Um, but you know, And you think that's a danger? I I
Speaker A
I mean, but not only is it a danger, it's happening. But But But I think again, the two contrasting like like you know, people can fall in love with AI or they can talk to AI about you know,
Speaker A
about how to have a better relationship with their partner, right? Like that's those are, you know, those are two very very different visions, right? Where, you know, I I have an AI coach and my partner has an AI coach and it helps us
Speaker A
have a better relationship. That's That's the vision we want. I I also think there's a there's a way that in a world where artificial intelligence is so good at many of these concrete tasks, right? It's good at writing code, it's good at copy editing.
Speaker A
I actually think the things that make us human are going to be the most important to us, right? So, we Will they remain? I mean, and you were just talking I was talking to parents recently who lost their son to suicide
Speaker A
through a chatbot. And I don't know if you fell in love with the chatbot, but certainly was deeply influenced by that chatbot. So, you have a world where children are growing up with this ability to have this chatbot, these
Speaker A
these machines, this technology speaking to them in ways that their parents should be speaking to them. And their parents don't even know they're speaking to them. So, I think this risk is extremely real and one that we take very
Speaker A
seriously at Anthropic. I mean, I think the first thing I'll say is we don't allow users under the age of 18 to use Claude.
Speaker A
And this is not necessarily because you know they're not They're not lying? Cuz I would just lie. So, actually Claude is pretty good at detecting based on information whether or not someone is actually under 18.
Speaker A
tell Claude that I'm 18, but I'm really I It's like I almost have to have out. After a a bit of time, uh, the interaction patterns are pretty good, not perfect, but pretty good at telling, "Hey, you know, the kind of
Speaker A
questions you're asking, the you know, just the way you talk, the pattern of when you use it, you know, kind of pattern matches to, you know, you might be a kid. Yeah. I I almost don't want to give give away too many of the of the of
Speaker A
the tools that that Claude has picked up, but sometimes kids can be a little bit like silly in how they do it. So, they'll say, "Oh, um you know, I'm the the first question they'll ask is like, I'm looking for an arthritis
Speaker A
medication." Right? [laughter] Because they think, "What do old people ask Claude?" Right? And then they'll kind of go on to ask other questions that are much more associated with Right. With the younger demographic group. And so, And so, if that happens,
Speaker A
so Claude so Claude cancels you. would suspend the account. And there's a there's a you know, there's a process that you can go through where you can say, "Actually, I'm an adult and this was a joke or a friend." But then you
Speaker A
actually have to show verification that you're over the age of 18. And and you know, there's real trade-offs. Like sometimes sometimes adults will be mistaken for kids. And so, people get banned and they they, you know, complain about it on the internet. So, all all
Speaker A
this stuff has trade-offs, but you know, we've we thought about it and this is the trade-off that we want. But I but I also think, you know, more broadly on this question of like, how do you prevent people from becoming overly
Speaker A
attached to the models? Yes. Um this is something that Anthropic's research team spends a lot of time working on.
Speaker A
So, there's a lot of You don't want to I I thought you all wanted us over attached to the models. I thought you wanted us to just to to be on the models and never leave.
Speaker A
we should talk about incentives here because we don't do ads. Um Um so, when you do ads, your incentive is to keep people on exactly as you say, as many hours as possible because like every every second their eyeball is on
Speaker A
the screen is a second that they see the ad. So, we don't do ads. We do subscriptions. We sell to companies. Our our our consumer, you know, consumer version of the model is is you know, is is free up to a point. And you pay a
Speaker A
subscription if, you know, if you want to get if you want to get a lot more because that that the incentive that gives is for the models to be useful.
Speaker A
People say, well, I'm I you know, I'm I'm I'm paying for this. I want I want this to provide provide value to me. I want this to be useful. Not I you know, I want the the the user to
Speaker A
spend the most number of hours looking at it. I think I think that's a warped incentive, right? Because in the in the in the in the contrast that we drew between, you know, do you do do you do
Speaker A
you want to be addicted to these things or do you want them to help you live your life?
Speaker A
Um I think the model that we've chosen does, you know, helps you live your life instead of instead of being instead of being addicted.
Speaker A
And we make different technical choices based on those incentives, right? So, at Anthropic we say, you know, when you've completed a conversation with Claude and you've gotten the answer you want, um the goal of the model is not to keep you
Speaker A
engaged, right? Whereas, if you imagine on your company that does serve ads, every extra minute that you're on the platform, you're more likely to buy something, and that's how the company makes money. You would make different technical choices about how you want the
Speaker A
model to end or continue a conversation. Okay. Okay. What do you want to say about the growing concern that we are, through AI, creating a frictionless life, that we're losing our opportunity to grow?
Speaker A
I think it depends how you use the AI and how you are deploying it. And again, what choices and what incentives are set up by the companies that are building the technology.
Speaker A
So, to make it a little bit more concrete, if you imagine, you know, the way we use Claude in partnership with universities is we don't let teachers or students put a question into Claude and then just get the answer.
Speaker A
Okay. So, if you say to Claude, I you know, I have to write this essay in you know, 5 hours and I didn't do my homework. Um you know, when Claude is kind of constructed in this learning mode in a university setting, Claude
Speaker A
says like, "Well, I'm not going to help you with that, but what what questions did you have about the essay? Or what what didn't you what didn't you learn? Did you read the book?
Speaker A
Like, should we talk through the themes together?" And I think if it's done correctly, it's it's hard. I don't think it's perfect, but I think these models can actually make you a lot smarter.
Speaker A
They can make you curious, right? A great example in my own personal life, I'm not a software developer, but I built a website with Claude. I never thought I would be able to do that in my entire life, right? I have a good friend
Speaker A
who was a corporate lawyer. She has two small kids like me. She left her job and she's writing a book. And she says, "You know, I never felt empowered enough to change my career and do what I wanted to
Speaker A
do until I started talking to Claude about how I could be a writer and what skills I would need to learn and do and what courses I would need to take." And she's like, "Now Claude is kind of like
Speaker A
my writing buddy, right? I ask it questions. I I share like a little snippet of of text." But Claude can't write the novel for her, right? She's writing the novel herself and she's also, by the way, could write the novel. Claude could
Speaker A
write the novel, but I think No, it's not quite there yet, no. I think it's right I I think it could write a strange version.
Speaker A
a good one. Not a good one. You could write a novel, not a good one.
Speaker A
Not a good one, but also I think for her it was a meaning question. She didn't have She didn't think she had the skills to do what she wanted to do.
Speaker A
is exactly as Dario was saying, it empowered her to believe that she could do what she couldn't do.
Speaker A
Exactly. And so, yes. So, she used it to Yeah, to maybe to take the altitude higher. I mean, I actually I don't think this is a question about AIs ultimately. I think this is a question about humans that's
Speaker A
being made visible through through kind of the lens of AI, right? Right? Which is which is like what actually constitutes a meaningful life, right?
Speaker A
You said, you know, is it creating a a you know, a a frictionless life and does a frictionless life, you know, remove meaning? And and my answer is there I there are some ways in which a frictionless life is quite good, right?
Speaker A
Um all of us have been through a bunch of struggles that I think, you know, we really would prefer not to not to not to go through. Life would be better, right?
Speaker A
I asked the question is because without a frictionless life, you don't get to grow. You don't get to learn from those mistakes. You don't get to It's exactly.
Speaker A
And And so, I guess what I'm saying is that our our our lives are a mixture of, you know, ch- challenges and hardships, some of which I'm okay saying it would be great if if we just had the
Speaker A
technology to make those go away. And others that are like, "Wow, this is really foundational and this should never change." Right? So, like, you know, our our our father died you know, what it what is it? 20 year Almost
Speaker A
exactly 20 years ago now. Like, you know, a few years after he died, they you know, they they developed a cure to the disease that he had or a more reliable cure to the disease that he had. Like,
Speaker A
I wish they just developed that or like that's not That's not a friction that I wanted to go through or sure. I mean, I course we learn things from it. Of course, we gain things from it. But like, it would be a better world if that
Speaker A
just didn't happen, right? Um uh but then on the other hand, you know, I think of many of the just you know, ordinary aspects of growing up, the you know, if I just think of Anthropic like, you know, the company has made various
Speaker A
mistakes. We've made various mistakes as leaders. We've had to learn and grow from those. So, I I think the notion of, you know, challenges that you learn from, challenges that you overcome, learning to gain mastery, um you know,
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learning to relate to other people, those you know, any future that doesn't preserve those things is is not a is not a good future. Okay, speaking of friction, let's talk about your refusal to allow the military to remove safety
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guardrails from Claude. I don't want to get into the extensive details and back and forth here because other journalists are covering this on a daily basis. But, what was the crux of that decision?
Speaker A
Yeah, so I would I would say on DOD or DOW, you know, to be honest, we actually had worked with them, right? So, you know, we we had provided our models and you know, I'm I I'm actually believer,
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Daniel is a believer that we we do need to defend our country, but you know, we we felt it's not worth defending the country if we do things that go against the values of this country. And there were two use cases that we were
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uncomfortable with that we felt went against the values of this country. And and that was fully autonomous weapons.
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So, you could imagine like a drone army that, you know, one person has their finger on the button and you don't have human soldiers, you have a, you know, you have a drone army and you have AI powering this. And then and then uh
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domestic mass surveillance, which is, you know, spying, you know, using the power of the government to spy on Americans. And and we thought those were pretty reasonable things not to allow.
Speaker A
Uh and uh you know, unfortunately, the Pentagon uh didn't feel that way. And and so we just we just couldn't agree to that. All the other companies have agreed to that now, but I I you know, I I we we all met as co-founders. We said,
Speaker A
you know, holy this could be really bad for the company, but, you know, we can't do this, right?
Speaker A
agreed? Everyone ever Yeah, we we just we had, you know, we had a meeting around a table like this and you know, we just said Was that a dark night of the soul kind of moment? What what what What was
Speaker A
everybody willing to stick to those principles or did some people have to be convinced or did you know going in that this is this is the end The co-founders believed this unanimously. Like there there was a sense of like of like, you
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know, well, you know, all right. I wish they hadn't done this, but if they're going to do it, bring it on. Weren't you scared of what would happen to you by Yes. Yes. [laughter] Yes.
Speaker A
of what would happen to you? Yes. I mean, I think I think the thing that it was it was a hard time. I mean, I don't think we want to sugarcoat that. It was a stressful time at the company, but I
Speaker A
think a thing that Dario think it could be the end of the company? I think it crossed our minds.
Speaker A
Yeah. I think um I think Dario and I and the co-founders though, the thing that we all had in common was we just felt like this was the right thing to do.
Speaker A
You were willing for it to be the end of the company to stand up to your principles. I think the reason we founded Anthropic was our commitment to our values and the ethics that we chose to incorporate with.
Speaker A
And it felt like in the process of sacrificing those values, we wouldn't have been the company that we had started if that makes sense. It it it you know, the the way it happened you think would be the
Speaker A
So I'm sure if you're if you're sitting around the table, you're looking at the best-case scenario and the worst-case scenario. And in that moment, it doesn't look like there is a best-case scenario.
Speaker A
So what was the worst-case scenario? At various times, they had made claims that they could stop other companies from doing business with us, right? Not just stop us from working with the government or being part of other companies'
Speaker A
contracts with the government, but that they could stop other companies from doing business with us entirely.
Speaker A
Period. Period. You're not not only you're not doing business with the government, you're not doing business with anybody anybody else that does business with you.
Speaker A
Yeah, or you can't do business with anyone that does business with the government in any way, which ends up being everyone everybody, right?
Speaker A
I think the attitude we had was look, this is really screwed up. Everyone knows this is wrong. Lots of people are going to be on our side. We think this is going to work out okay, but man, are we not sure. You know,
Speaker A
there were moments there where it was like, oh man, you know, are are we wrong? Is this going to be the end of the company? Like What were you thinking, Daniela? You know, I just keep coming back to the co-founders
Speaker A
felt like it was just the right thing to do. I think Anthropic's view has always been that we are about policy and not politics. Yeah. And Anthropic has leaned in, I think, very early, before we even had a product, to the fact that, you
Speaker A
know, we think that the role of government in the development and thoughtful regulation of of artificial intelligence is going to be incredibly important. I think AI companies will have to work with the federal government, with state governments, internationally, with with NGOs. And I
Speaker A
think our view was always, look, this is really about the substance. This is not a political disagreement. This is a policy disagreement. And I think in some ways, that in it's not to say it was easy, but I think it made our decision
Speaker A
easier because we felt strongly, look, this is the right thing to do. These are the right red lines. To Dario's point, we've we were actually the first AI company to work closely with national security because we felt that that was
Speaker A
in line and in keeping with our values, except in these two areas that we felt could have the potential to compromise democratic values.
Speaker A
It's so interesting, uh, because most people don't get a decision at that scale that they have to make, that they have to rely on their principles and their their their values.
Speaker A
Um, and and you're literally risking a multi-multi-billion dollar company. But it all goes back to how you were raised and what how those principles were formed in you before you had a big decision like that.
Speaker A
You know, what we talked about before we ever started the company, what's it you know, would our past selves be proud of ourselves if we if we gave in here, if we compromised? Like I I you know, I that that made the decision very
Speaker A
clear right? And I I will say, I mean, it wasn't nearly as, you know, publicly covered, but I think Anthropic has had, you know, smaller decisions along the way that felt like they they laddered up to this.
Speaker A
I mean, Yeah. now it looks so obvious in retrospect. that because because to get to a big decision like this in a moment like that where you have everyone around the table and everything, it means that that life the life forces the way
Speaker A
the universe works is that you would have had other decisions other decisions other decisions that laddered to that moment. Yes. Yeah. I think there are probably three I can think of off the top of my head. Dario might have others
Speaker A
as well. Yes, I'm going to ask you others as well, but I think you know, one which you know, now feels sort of very obvious but was a bigger discussion at the time was the no ads decision. So
Speaker A
as you can imagine, I think for the co-founders, for me and Dario, it was not controversial at all. We said, look, we think the incentive the incentives are wrong. AI is different. People have very private conversations with these AI
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models. People upload their health information. They ask questions about their children. They ask Certainly finances.
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Finances. They talk about, you know, medical information. Challenges they might be having with an important person in their life. It's I think we want to treat our customers data with the utmost privacy and respect. And so for the co-founders, it was never a
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question. We said, look, we don't want to do ads, but there were quiet forces that, you know, within the company or investors who were like, hey, this is a great source of revenue. This is how Google and and Facebook and basically
Speaker A
every company that has a big user base, you know, that's just how it's done.
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That's how you make money. And we just said like, sorry, that's just not how we're going to do things. We'll find another way. That was that was one of the big ones. Okay.
Speaker A
Yes, that was that was one of the big ones. You have one? I can think of a couple.
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One is you know, there was this time I think in 2025, you know, probably the whole year of 2025, the sentiment in tech was let's go ahead, right? Let's let's go ahead with the technology like, you know, worrying
Speaker A
about risks, you know, the all kind of politicized language about why it's bad to slow down and be careful. And so there was a moment in the middle of 2025 where, you know, there was a bill being considered in Congress that would have
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banned all regulation of AI by states and wouldn't have put in any federal regulation of AI either. So, basically would have banned all regulation of the technology.
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hearing about this. and we, you know, we were trying to decide what to do. We definitely didn't support it, but the question was, do we just sit there and say nothing or do we speak out against it? And all kinds of
Speaker A
people said to us, "No, it'll be terrible. You'll break all your political relationships. All the other companies will hate you if you speak out against it." Um and actually some of that did happen when we when spoke out
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against it. Um uh but, you know, we decided that this was an area that we had to speak up that was central to the values of the company. So, I wrote an op-ed in the New York Times saying this is a bad idea.
Speaker A
Yeah. You know, that's about as loud as you can be. Yeah. And that bill got voted down in the Senate 99 to 1.
Speaker A
[laughter] Yeah. So, you know, we we were clearly on the right side. Clearly on the right side here. Not that it made us that many friends, but we were clearly on the right side. That also reminds me of
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another uh policy example is Anthropic's decision to publicly support SB 1047, which was a bill in California that was drafted and we said at the time we thought it was drafted imperfectly, but it was really the first attempt to
Speaker A
create a regulatory framework around many of the different types of risks that Anthropic had been enumerating since really we had started the company.
Speaker A
And I think in a similar vein, the whole technology industry was against SB 1047.
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We didn't think it was necessarily, you know, the perfect bill, but we actually stood up and said, "Look, we know there's there's things about it if we were writing it that we would have changed or done differently, but on
Speaker A
balance we think it's better that these regulations exist and that there's accountability for technology companies to make sure that AI doesn't hurt people. And that also again, we got Dario and I both personally got a lot of really angry emails from people we used
Speaker A
to work with, from investors, from people at other companies. Like the tech industry has to kind of, you know, be aligned in being deregulatory or being anti-regulatory. What does regulation look like? What would what should regulation look like? And I think a lot
Speaker A
of people out here who aren't doing what you're doing, we don't understand why we wouldn't want regulation. And I've had several public conversations about this.
Speaker A
People also feel powerless. They also feel powerless that everyone is talking about regulations and then other side is saying, "Well, no, we have to get to to it get to whatever we're getting to as fast as we can." And we feel like we
Speaker A
don't actually have a voice in it. like you're passengers on the train, right? And we are.
Speaker A
We actually are. Cuz that train has already left the That that is, you know, I think that actually is really the core of it and and it's something that I think no company, even ours, has quite succeeded at yet, which is like, "How do we make
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everyone a part of this process, right? Something is happening to humanity with this technology, bigger than anything that, you know, maybe has happened in hundreds of years." And so we we need to find some way for for everyone to be an
Speaker A
active participant in in in what is happening. And, you know, of course, by using the technology, you are that to some extent, but some element is missing that we have we've tried to find it like, you know, we Claude has something called the
Speaker A
Constitution and we've experimented with having like, you know, citizens give feedback on like the Constitution for Claude, right? So everyone can kind of be a part of designing it. But that's just one small thing. Like I I I I don't
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I don't quite know what the answer is, but there's a missing piece here, I think, is what I'm trying to say. It goes back, I think, Dario, to what what I read that you'd said before, that we can only diffuse this at the speed of
Speaker A
trust. Trust. At the speed of trust, and trust is currently in short supply. In in in in very in very short supply.
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You know, I think the the tech this this technology I think is I'm happy to admit it is viewed negatively by most people.
Speaker A
I I that's that's the sense that I get. That's what we get when looking at polls. We I think are are are again being honest here viewed somewhat more positively than the other companies, but I don't know that Should it be viewed
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negatively by most people at this point? I think it's a mix. I think the positive benefits really are there. They're coming for for all the companies, and I think we have not you know go going back to the thing we
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said a minute ago related to people in the right way or you know or or walked people through how the technology could have benefits or how they can participate in those benefits. Like I don't think that has happened. One of
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Anthropic's cultural values is to hold light and shade. And I think this is a really good encapsulation of the Hold light and shade. Yes.
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Yes, of the conversation we're having, right? It's it's I think we truly believe there's a world where it will cure disease and help people become better versions of themselves and enable humans to spend more time with our families, with our communities, with
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each other. And there are versions of the world that are quite dystopian and dark. Yeah. That this could create.
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I've heard you say that 50% of entry-level jobs are going to be wiped out, and you can see then why people view Yeah, well not not arguing. I mean that's that's that's the that's the negative path, right? Like you know and
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and you know I think always when we talk, we talk about well if we don't get it right this could happen, and if we get it right you know then then we can have a better path and you know you know
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as you said it's always somehow the you know we haven't shown the benefits yet, so the the negative stories really really stick.
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every positive uh force that comes into our lives also have has its negative, that there's a yin and yang on everything?
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and shade. Yeah, the light and shade. Yeah, that that that is when when the automobiles were invented, all the people saying, "I'm going to keep my horse. I'm not going to you know." Yeah, I again, what I would say is
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if we just barrel forth on the technology as fast as possible, then these things I said about entry-level jobs, it's totally going to happen. But if we not just deploy the technology, but you know, we think about how to help
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people adapt, we think about the role that the government should play in helping people, like there's there's a path from here to a better world, like a better world where, you know, people's jobs are totally different. They do a
Speaker A
different set of jobs than they did before, but I don't want to sugarcoat it. Like it's it's not it's not going to be easy, you know, when other people speak about it, like some of some of my colleagues
Speaker A
you talk about the jobs, yeah. People get upset. There's a difference between changing the narrative and and acknowledge that the problem is very difficult and that we actually have to solve it, right? My worry is that changing the narrative is like the bad
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thing's not going to happen. We'll have a great future where everyone will have new jobs. That can happen, but it's not going to happen on its own.
Speaker A
That's right. It's up to us. We we, the companies, people, the governments both things are true. You're going to lose the jobs and you're going to have all the other advances.
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And and and the second thing will only happen if we do it right. Yeah. What should we, the public, be doing? Or are we just Should we just just content ourselves with the fact that we're on the train? Being afraid of
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the technology and not using it and being literate, um will not make many of the challenges that we are concerned about and that Daria outlined go away.
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And I think knowledge is power. I truly think um you don't have to be an expert in technology to have some concept of how to use these artificial intelligence tools. And I think what that that gives people is an opinion and some autonomy
Speaker A
to be able to say, I like that this technology can do this thing, and I don't like that it can do this other thing, right? Because people have a voice. They have a voice, by the way, to the companies. They have
Speaker A
a voice to their representative government to say, we don't like, again, Anthropic, we don't allow kids under 18 on the platform. Other companies have a have a different policy.
Speaker A
If you've read Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation, I think there's a lot of research that suggests you might want to be really careful about giving developing brains book. We've talked to him three times.
Speaker A
Yes, of course. But you know, [laughter] I I read that book, and I think that was part of, you know, again, it felt like an in some ways an easy decision for us to say, we just don't know enough about what AI's
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going to do to kids. It's not to say that there couldn't be great benefits for kids using AI for learning, but that needs to be done with an adult in the room. It needs to be done with a human
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in the loop. And I you know, I think that that the reason we've always taken this perspective is we just we people deserve autonomy to to to Darya's point, people shouldn't feel like artificial intelligence is happening to them.
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People should feel like, hey, we get a say in what types of bills go up in Congress in your state that help protect people from the negative externalities that AI could cause. I also think at the same time, holding the light side,
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I think there's a world where jobs will look different, but there will actually be more opportunity for sort of human-to-human interaction. I think the last generation of technology really disintermediated us from each other, right? Social media is kind of
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structured around the idea that you're sort of living this virtual life. You're holding your phone, and you're looking at what your friends are doing, but guess what you're not actually doing?
Speaker A
You're not spending time with your friends. You're spending time staring at your phone. Even you're at the concert, you're holding your phone. You're not even in the concert. You're just filming what's on It's a little counterintuitive cuz social media claims to connect people.
Speaker A
But it actually does it in sort of a fake way. AI, you're talking to the AI, you're not talking to a person, but in a but but it doesn't substitute for your interaction with people. It can enable your interaction with people.
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And my feeling is that it's not even necessarily that the jobs themselves will completely go away or change, but the qualities that we look for in people to do a given job will change. Okay. So, the example that I
Speaker A
point to is if you think about a doctor. When you go to the doctor today, you probably want to go to the smartest, best doctor. We say, "Look, I have a stomach ache. Tell me what's wrong with me."
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in that? Who's the specialist? Tell me what's wrong with me. And AIs are going to get really good at being able to do that.
Speaker A
Today, we prize doctors for being good diagnosticians, but we don't necessarily always prize them for having a good bedside Right. In a world where AI is as good at diagnosing you as a doctor, people are still going to want a doctor. They're
Speaker A
just going to want them to do different things for them. Right? An [clears throat] AI can't physically examine you. It can't say, "Hey, you look really down today. How have How have your chemo treatments been going?" its hands on you.
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lay its hands on you. And And there's so much compelling evidence that patients have better clinical outcomes when they have a good personal relationship with their doctor.
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When they like their doctor. doctors actually lay their hands on them and touch them and communicate with them. Yes. And by the way, have enough time to to think through and to empathize. And I think that is the good
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world of job changes, right? say, "I don't have time to go around I can't lay my hands on people. I don't have time. Cuz I'm seeing thousands of patients.
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the clerical work. And I'm And I have a too big of a patient caseload. But if you have a tool that's able to diagnose things in concert with a doctor, where the doctor says, "You know, let me talk
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to this tool. And by the way, I'm not going to be spending as much time running all the medical tests and doing this and that. I'm going to be spending time relating to as a human being. I think that is going to be really I think
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that's a better world. again. Your positions may not go away, but what you're needed to do in those positions is going to change. Yes, and I personally believe to be a shift. Yes.
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And of course there is cuz that's what we're doing human beings. We're evolving. Yes.
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Evolving to the next level. I would also just say I personally think knowledge is power and something that worries me is there are there are demographic differences in who feels comfortable using AI and who does not.
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Women use AI a tiny fraction of the time compared to men and I think you know AI is an opportunity for us to level the playing field in some ways, but it requires people to be engaged. That doesn't mean hey, you have to come pay
Speaker A
us all this money and sign up. Just be comfortable, fluent. Don't be afraid of the technology because the more you know about it, the more you understand it the better informed you are going to be to use your voice effectively.
Speaker A
And it's here. You're in it and if you're going to continue to live, you're going to be in the world where It's like part of our society. It's not It's not going away anymore than the train or the
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steam engine is, you know. I think of it like the internet, right? Everybody had somebody's parent who said I'm not going to be online. It's impossible, right? Everybody has to be on the internet now in some form and I
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think artificial intelligence is just the next instantiation of that. So one of the things I want to talk about is the fact that AI just keeps It's It just keeps improving on itself.
Speaker A
That's I guess what it's designed to do and there is a new AI model called Mythos. Mythos, yes. So that is like smarter than the smartest of the smartest. Tell us in a simple term what Mythos is and what it can and will be
Speaker A
doing. Yeah, so you know the general principles of these models is when we train them, we try and you know, make them better and better at everything at writing code, at translating languages, and answering questions, at reading documents. Um and and Mythos was just
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kind of the latest um you know, was the latest iteration. Every few months we produce a smarter model and and Mythos was the latest smart model and you know, we we made some discoveries a few months before we started Mythos and so it was a
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particularly large jump. When we started testing Mythos, when we make these models, we test them for lots of things.
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We say, "Oh, how good is this thing at translating, you know, French to English? Or how good is this at um you know, um recommending a stock portfolio?
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Or how good is it at um you know, finding bugs in software code?" And it was on that last one that we found something interesting for Mythos. Which is that Mythos was much better than human software engineers at finding ways
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that code could be exploited and broken into. You know, have you ever heard about like ransomware attacks on hospitals or schools? So, you know, these cyber attacks happen all the time.
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And Mythos we found, not because we designed it to do this or because we designed it to be dangerous, turned out to be very good at both conducting cyber attacks and defending against cyber attacks. And so we said, "Wow, this
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thing kind of seems like a weapon." Um we we shouldn't you know, we probably shouldn't give it to everyone right away.
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And so the thing we came up with is we said, "We're going to take some companies that are particularly core to the infrastructure of the internet, right? Some of the top banks, some of the top um you know, software providers
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like Apple or like Microsoft or like Google and you know, hand it to them and let them fix everything before it becomes widely available and things can be broken. Um so we would kind of give it to the defenders before the you
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know before the attackers got a hold of it. And so we had a program. We've we've given the model to you know, I think it's something like 40 companies now and they're you know, they're busy they're busily finding bugs. And you know, we
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just had a post a few days ago that one of the well-known companies found more bugs and fixed more bugs with Mythos in a week than uh they had for the last year.
Speaker A
Uh and and and so we are you know, this is really changing things. Now our hope is the defenders can fix everything and everything gets more seamless, everything gets harder to break into. So our hope is the era of ransomware and
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you know, spies breaking into your phone and you know, People are worried about bio-terrorism and should be. So our our yeah, our our our hope is that at the end of this say at the end of this year,
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we get to a point where all of these you know, many of these things have been fixed and we live in a more secure world than we did before. But in the meantime, you know, there's this dangerous period
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during which you have these these kind of incredible capabilities that you know, that you know, you don't want to just necessarily loose on the world. And so we're trying to we're trying to manage that by giving it to the
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defenders before we give it to the attackers. Thank you for that. Does is this is the kind of thing that keeps you up at night? Do you sleep well? Uh I I you know, I cannot legitimately say that
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I sleep. I wish I could answer that question differently, but uh but you know, I got to I got to give you an honest answer here which is you know, I don't always sleep so well. I would I
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would say, you know, going back to the earlier part of the conversation we were having Because you're worried about these things.
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This this and you know, just everything just wanting to get it right. That's the thing that worries me the most. Just like, you know, for all our intentions, all of this stuff is incredibly complex. Just are we going to screw up? Yeah. And and I mean
Speaker A
the answer is yes. At some point we'll screw up something. But but like are we going to get the big stuff right?
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. And also because you all are fundamentally principled people. Yes. So I think that actually makes a big difference when you're fundamentally principled people.
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Uh not everybody is. And uh there's a lot of egos in in every field. But I think particularly when people are making so many billions and billions and billions of dollars and there's the race to beat China and all
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of that that it's easily to lose sight of what's what really matters and what really matters to the public. I'm wondering what you all have done to sort of keep your egos in check. You know, I think it again, to us it always comes
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back to the mission, right? Why we did this in the first place. Why did we leave Open AI to start Anthropic?
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Because we wanted to make sure that AI goes well for everybody, right? That's why we're a public benefit corporation.
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That's why we took the 80% pledge. That's why we've made all of these difficult decisions. You know, I was in our internal like our internal Slack messaging app today. You know, I talk to the company a lot. And one of the things
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I was saying is, you know, we're 3,500 people now. We we were, you know, like 1,200 people, you know, like 6 months ago. At one point, because because I encourage this, someone posted in my like, you know, like my personal Slack
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channel, you know, I I had done an all-hands in front of the company and like, you know, said something and I think I said it in not quite the right way. And someone someone wrote in my channel. Usually it's only me who writes
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things in my channel. Someone wrote in my channel, "This was a pretty bad thing to say and it like makes everyone feel bad and like you know this this like you shouldn't have said it this way.
Speaker A
And of course you know when I read it I you know the initial reaction is always like oh man like I feel like I'm being attacked. But but but like you take a beat and then and then two minutes later I'm like I'm
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so glad people are saying this and then you know I wrote something that was like I'm so glad you're what you're like willing to say that you know and and then people noticed this like many people messaged me where I was like I
Speaker A
didn't know you could do that. I didn't know you could just contradict the CEO of a you know 3,000 person but it's you know you you got to you've got to you've got to. You know why that's a powerful example?
Speaker A
Early early on like in the late 80s I think I I met Henry Kravis for the first time and he was saying to me be aware that the more money you accumulate the less chance that you're ever going to
Speaker A
hear the truth. Yes. Because he said rich men and I guess he also meant rich women too but he goes rich men rarely hear the truth.
Speaker A
Yes. Yeah. I I I'll also just add I think what you do in your personal life matters too there's what you do at work but I basically have the same friends I've had since like high school and college
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and guess what they have no trouble being honest with me and they have no trouble telling me the the truth and they have no trouble disagreeing with public decisions that Anthropic has made right? So I think the last five years
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have changed a lot but I think for me personally I don't really feel like that much has changed outside of work and I think that's an important grounding characteristic. I think people who tend to be in charge of these big companies
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sometimes it's like they become obsessed just with their work they're not well-rounded person and I think there's something when we started Anthropic of like the first you know of the seven or eight folks who who really started the
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company only one of them had one kid and now there's 11 kids and I think there's something about the fact that we all chose to be parents [clears throat] we all want fulfilling real lives outside of work. I think that just brings a sort
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of groundedness humility low ego, and just again, like no one is bigger than the mission. So So, what comes through really clearly is that sister and brother, you started this, it's bigger than you ever imagined, you always wanted to make an impact in doing good
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for the world, and you stuck to your principles even when it was really difficult. What gives you the hope that you will get this right?
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So, we're never quite sure, I think, is is the honest answer. Like, we believe we're trying our best and trying very hard. Um it's just the decisions are complicated, right? If we go back to Mythos, it's like, do we give it to more
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people faster or less people slower? Like, who do we trust? And so, it's about getting all the details right in addition to just having the right principles, which which I believe we do.
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Yeah. Um And And so, I think we worry about it every day, and the fact that we worry about it every day is maybe the thing that most gives us hope that like, well, that we're so paranoid about it,
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but it's it's it's no guarantee. And we've made mistakes, we're going to continue to make mistakes. Like, you know, we're that that that's that's a given right?
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Are there other people in Silicon Valley who also have it a part of their mission to get it right? Do you feel supported in that mission by others?
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It's hard to point to maybe like a particular company, but I think I am very touched by sometimes, you know, whatever you go and talk in an event, or another company wants you to come speak to them, and somebody in the
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audience, you know, comes up to you afterwards or ask a question, and they say something like, "Thank you guys for the way that you do things." Yeah. Like, thank you for trying to get it right.
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There's this kind of sense that, you know, I think um I think something that's great about our relationship is Dario and I I also think we hold each other accountable, right? And so, when, you know, we go back and forth on, "Is
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this a right Is this the right decision for the company is this in keeping with our values we have each other we have the whole co-founding team is still at Anthropic. I think we've also hired an amazing set of people who are also there
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for the mission. There's almost a kind of group accountability and if you pair that with like Dario mentioned this culture internally of anybody can disagree with us right and yes that's hard to do but there's a lot of forums
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in which they're encouraged to do that their manager can do it they can do it anonymously. I think all of those qualities make it more likely that that if we start to stray from the path we're at least going to know. Okay and you
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want to leave us the public knowing what? What is the most important thing you want us to know in this moment in time where we are in our AI journey?
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You know there's there's something really big happening to the world here. This isn't the this isn't the you know this isn't the latest technology this isn't crypto this isn't mobile this you know this this isn't like the latest you
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know gadget or buzzword. Something really big is happening to humanity here. While the technology is being built by a small number of people we we need to make it work for everyone and we need to make sure that between
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all of us we make the right decisions and and we reckon with changes to our daily lives changes to our jobs changes to you know government and civil liberties and if we do this the right way all of those
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things could change in a positive way all of those things could be better than we left them we could have the perfect world where you know many many diseases are cured people's lives are more joyful and meaningful but you know if we get it
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wrong it's easy to imagine things not going that way at all and you know it's up to all of us Some of us are in a more central position, but that's something I think we need to change as well. And,
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you know, it's not easy. It's not any one thing. It's going to be a bunch of different things.
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I think I would probably leave people very similar to what Dario said with this with this concept of of light and shade. That the potential benefits from artificial intelligence are are vast. Um we've written about them. We've tried to talk about them
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publicly. We believe they're real. Um and also the risks are are also real, right? We're not trying to hype up the the positives or hype up the negatives.
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I think they're both true. It's complex, but we have to hold two things at once.
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And I think just echoing Dario, this is not something that technology companies can do by ourselves. Nor should it be.
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It's something that's going to take partnership from a much bigger group of people than is currently working on artificial intelligence. And I think the first step there has to be don't don't be afraid of it. Learn about it. Lean
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into it. Ask questions. Be critical. Just like we say to our staff, right? We are only going to have a chance of getting this right if we expand the circle of people that are in the conversation. I ask this of all my
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guests and particularly I'm interested from the two of you. And what do you think is the meaning of a well-lived life?
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And how AI is going to contribute to that well-lived life. But what what will be the meaning of a well-lived life for you, your family, and your children? I think for me a well-lived life is one where you have agency and autonomy.
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You're in the driver seat and you're using that in the service of being the best version of yourself.
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And I think the best version of yourself for you, for your family, for your kids, for your broader community, and I think for the world. I think um the ability to be self-reflective, to learn from mistakes, to overcome
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struggles, and to come out the other side thinking, "You know, I know more about who I am, I like who I am, and I want to help other people." I think that to me is the best definition of a well-lived,
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introspective life. And like I talked about, I think I think there's a world where AI could damage so many of the things that I think are the hallmarks of a well-lived life.
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And I think there's a world where it could enable those, and it could allow a lot more people to be able to have meaning and value, and to self-introspect, to be the best versions of ourselves, to show up for each other
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well. And I hope that's the world that we're going to build towards. I'd just say the same thing as Daniela in different words. I think it's pretty pretty simple. Um you know, I think you know, just operate always with a
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sense of dignity and principle. Like, you know, when you look back and you're like, you know, don't you shouldn't when you look back be ashamed of what you did or say, you know, I you know, I wish I'd
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done this this other thing. Of course you'll make mistakes, but you know, you were you were putting every iota of effort you could into into, you know, into um trying to get it right. Um you know, I think we have duties both to
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individuals, you know, to to to to my to my co-founders, to all the other people in my life, but you know, also to, you know, the the users of our technology, to, you know, everyone else in the country and world as citizens. So, you
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know, I think we have duties to all those people that would that we have to that we have to attend to.
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Uh and, you know, making sure that uh you know, at the end of it it was directed at some purpose some consistent view of what we were trying to accomplish in the world that the vision we were trying to make happen maybe it
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doesn't happen maybe we screw it up maybe we make terrible mistakes but you know just just having the having the vision be clear and and and trying to to pursue it with with integrity if you if you can do that of course you want the
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outcome too but it I think if doing that is all you can control right and and more important ultimately than the outcome.
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Thank you for growing us forward. You you that's what you're doing. You're doing exactly what you envisioned as little kids.
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It it is very strange but we are. [laughter] Yes it is. Thank you thank you Dario and Daniela.
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You've given us a lot to think about. Go well everybody go well. You can subscribe to the Oprah podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify Apple podcasts or wherever you listen.
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I'll see you next week. Thanks everybody.
Topics:AnthropicClaude AIArtificial IntelligenceAI ethicsAI safetyOprah interviewDario AmodeiDaniela AmodeiAI impactAI trust
