Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the most important thing he does each day has nothing to do with training AI models or shipping products. Instead, he said, he spends almost half his time working on company culture.<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably spend a third, maybe 40%, of my time making sure the culture of Anthropic is good,\u201d Amodei said in an interview on the Dwarkesh Podcast<\/a> earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n Amodei\u2019s comments offer a rare window into how one of tech\u2019s most closely watched CEOs manages a company that now sports 2,500 employees and is valued at $380 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n As Anthropic has expanded, it has become nearly impossible for Amodei to weigh in on every technical and product decision, he said. So rather than dig into the finer details, he has tried to focus on the bigger picture: making sure his employees like working for Anthropic; that the company\u2019s mission and values are clear; and that all workers are working toward the same mission instead of against one another,<\/a> as he said happens at other unnamed AI companies.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019ve done an extraordinarily good job, even if not perfect, of holding the company together, making everyone feel the mission, that we\u2019re sincere about the mission, and that everyone has faith that everyone else there is working for the right reason,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Key to Amodei\u2019s approach to culture is constant communication and extreme sincerity. Amodei said he speaks candidly about his vision for the company in a biweekly all-hands he called a \u201cDVQ,\u201d short for Dario Vision Quest\u2014a name he tried to resist at first because of its potential psychedelic connotation.<\/p>\n During these meetings, Amodei stands in front of the entire company with a three- or four-page document and speaks for an hour on topics ranging from product strategy to geopolitics<\/a>, as well as the broader AI industry. A large fraction of the company attends, either in person or virtually, he said.<\/p>\n Amodei says he speaks plainly with his employees, answering questions and avoiding what he calls \u201ccorpo speak.\u201d He also has an active Slack channel where he writes responses to employee questions or his own thoughts about the company throughout the week.<\/p>\n Amodei\u2019s blunt approach to communication echoes the \u201cradical transparency\u201d leadership style pioneered by Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio. As part of his management style, Dalio encourages employees to give honest feedback even to senior members of the firm. Dalio argues the method helps improve the company\u2019s standards, but some critics have said allowing a no-holds-barred culture of communication could potentially make employees more closed off.<\/p>\n Amodei\u2019s comments come as Anthropic updated its Responsible Scaling Policy, dropping its pledge not to continue training its AI after it had reached a certain level of capability unless it could guarantee its safety measures were adequate. Anthropic said the change was driven by competitive pressures and a lack of regulations. Critics have implied<\/a> the move shifts Anthropic\u2019s mission away from the safety-first identity on which it was founded.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet when it comes to company issues, Amodei said on the podcast, he takes an \u201cunfiltered\u201d approach. Inside Anthropic, he can be completely candid with his employees about the company\u2019s direction and the issues it faces. That openness, he said, is what keeps everyone on the same page\u2014even as pressure may be building externally.<\/p>\n \u201cThe point is to get a reputation of telling the company the truth about what\u2019s happening, to call things what they are, to acknowledge problems, to avoid the sort of \u2018corpo speak,\u2019 the kind of defensive communication that often is necessary in public,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if you have a company of people who you trust\u2014and we try to hire people that we trust\u2014then you can really just be entirely unfiltered.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the most important thing he does each day has nothing to do with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,1119,733,4308,19818,5627,6284,19823,227,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-450513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-anthropic","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-bridgewater-associates","13":"tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","14":"tag-dario-amodei","15":"tag-ray-dalio","16":"tag-tech","17":"tag-technology","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}