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Dario Amodei may boast many credentials, but we weren\u2019t aware that meteorologist was one of them.<\/p>\n
This week, the Anthropic CEO warned of an impending AI \u201ctsunami\u201d that will upend human society as the tech surpasses human intelligence. And if you don\u2019t believe him, he suggests, you\u2019re simply lying to yourself.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s surprising to me that we are, in my view, so close to these models reaching human level intelligence, and yet there doesn\u2019t seem to be a wider recognition in society of what\u2019s about to happen,\u201d Amodei said in an interview with Indian investor Nikhil Kamath on an episode the WTF Is podcast<\/a> released Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s as if this tsunami is coming at us, and it\u2019s so close we can see it on the horizon,\u201d he prophesized. \u201cAnd yet people are coming up with these explanations, \u2018oh, it\u2019s not actually a tsunami\u2026 that\u2019s just a trick of the light.’\u201d<\/p>\n Amodei\u2019s comments echo the bold and often dire predictions peddled by leaders in the AI industry. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has frequently been candid that AI will wipe out entire categories of jobs. Microsoft\u2019s AI CEO warned<\/a> that virtually all office tasks will be automated by AI agents within one and a half years. Amodei infamously warned that AI would eliminate half of entry-level white collar jobs<\/a>. While these sound like damaging predictions to make on the surface, they reinforce a fatalistic attitude toward the tech, suggesting it\u2019s inevitable it will improve.<\/p>\n But if an AI tsunami is indeed coming, as Amodei claims, then Anthropic has a major hand in it. Its recent release of its Claude Cowork AI agent sparked a mass software stock selloff<\/a> that reverberated throughout the broader stock market and wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars.\u00a0<\/p>\n The company also heavily anthropomorphizes its AI models with stunts like letting it share its \u201creflections\u201d on its own Substack<\/a>,\u00a0and consistently dangling the possibility that it may already be conscious<\/a>. This plants the idea that the tech is on its inevitable way to becoming an all-powerful artificial general intelligence, or in the industry\u2019s latest preferred nomenclature, an AI \u201csuperintelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n Tsunami or not, Amodei\u2019s comments come during a pretty stormy moment for the company. This week, it abandoned one of its central safety pledges<\/a> which held it would not train or release an AI model that it couldn\u2019t guarantee adequate guardrails for, undermining the company\u2019s entire raison d\u2019etre. That decision was made amid pressure from the Pentagon<\/a> to relax its restrictions on how its AIs are used or face losing its $200 million defense contract<\/a>.<\/p>\n Though Anthropic positioned itself as the safety-focused adult in the room, it\u2019s now sounding no less hypocritical than its competitors for feigning concern for the tech\u2019s impacts on society.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere hasn\u2019t been an appropriate realization of the risks of the technology, and there certainly hasn\u2019t been action,\u201d Amodei said during his recent podcast appearance.<\/p>\n