‘Wake up to the risks of AI, they are almost here,’ Anthropic boss warns
Humanity is entering a phase of artificial intelligence development that will “test who we are as a species”, the boss of the AI startup Anthropic has said, arguing that the world needs to “wake up” to the risks,Dario Amodei, a co-founder and the chief executive of the company behind the hit chatbot Claude, voiced his fears in a 19,000-word essay titled “The adolescence of technology”,Describing the arrival of highly powerful AI systems as potentially imminent, he wrote: “I believe we are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species,”Amodei added: “Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it,”The tech entrepreneur, whose company is reportedly worth $350bn (£255bn), said his essay was an attempt to “jolt people awake” because the world needed to “wake up” to the need for action on AI safety.
Amodei published the text as the UK government announced Anthropic would help create chatbots that support jobseekers with career advice and finding employment, as part of developing an AI assistant for public services in general.Last week, the company published an 80-page “constitution” for Claude in which it set out how it wanted to make its AI “broadly safe, broadly ethical”.Amodei co-founded Anthropic in 2021 along with other former staff members from OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT.A prominent voice for online safety known for warning consistently of the dangers of unrestrained AI development, he wrote that the world was “considerably closer to real danger” in 2026 than it had been in 2023, when the debate over existential risk from AI raced up the political agenda.He alluded to the controversy over sexualised deepfakes created by Elon Musk’s Grok AI that flooded the social media platform X over Christmas and the new year, including warnings that the chatbot was creating child sexual abuse material.
Amodei wrote: “Some AI companies have shown a disturbing negligence towards the sexualisation of children in today’s models, which makes me doubt that they’ll show either the inclination or the ability to address autonomy risks in future models.”The Anthropic CEO said powerful AI systems that could autonomously build their own systems could be as little as one to two years away.He defined “powerful AI” as a model that was smarter than a Nobel prizewinner across fields such as biology, mathematics, engineering and writing.It could give or take directions to or from humans, and although it “lived” on a computer screen it could control robots and even design them for its own use.While acknowledging that powerful AIs could be “considerably further out” than the two-year timeframe, Amodei said recent rapid progress made by the technology should be taken seriously.
“If the exponential continues – which is not certain, but now has a decade-long track record supporting it – then it cannot possibly be more than a few years before AI is better than humans at essentially everything,” he wrote,Last year, Amodei warned that AI could halve the number of entry-level white-collar jobs and send overall unemployment rocketing to 20% within the next five years,In his essay, Amodei cautioned that the economic prize from AI, such as productivity gains from eliminating jobs, could be so great that no one applied the brakes,“This is the trap: AI is so powerful, such a glittering prize, that it is very difficult for human civilisation to impose any restraints on it at all,” he said,However, Amodei stated he was optimistic about a positive conclusion.
“I believe if we act decisively and carefully, the risks can be overcome – I would even say our odds are good,And there’s a hugely better world on the other side of it,But we need to understand that this is a serious civilisational challenge,”
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The performer was found dead in ‘unexpected’ circumstances in her London flat in 2023. Why are her loved ones still waiting for an explanation?In commemorations and memorials after her death, the view was unanimous: Heklina had been a bitch. In the world of San Francisco’s drag scene, where she made her name, this wasn’t meant as an insult. Heklina had been a legendary performer whose stage persona was equal parts raunchy and abrasive, slinging insults known as “reads” in fine drag tradition. “Yeah, she was a bitch,” recalls her longtime collaborator Sister Roma, “but she was a bitch in the best possible way
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The first single I bought Rollout (My Business) by Ludacris from HMV in Lewisham Shopping Centre. I played it over and over.The first song I fell in love with I grew up listening to a lot of reggae – my dad was a Rastafarian – so Get Up, Stand Up by Bob Marley was always playing in the house when my mum was dishing out the chores. It’s ironic that it’s a song about redemption when you’re being told to clean the house.The song I do at karaoke You need to have a song that everyone knows, so they can help you sing along, so I’d go for Angels by Robbie Williams or Wonderwall by Oasis
The Guide #227: A brain-melting sci-fi movie marathon, curated by Britain’s best cult film-maker
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My cultural awakening: A Queen song helped me break free from communist Cuba
Listening to Brian May’s multi-tracked epic on a battered cassette player when I lived in repressive Havana inspired lit a spark of rebellion inside meThroughout my childhood and teenage years growing up in 80s Cuba, Fidel Castro’s presence, and the overt influence of politics, was everywhere – on posters, on walls, in speeches that could last four hours at a stretch. The sense of being hemmed in, politically and personally, was hard to escape.I had been raised to believe in communism, and for a long time I did. I even applied twice to join the Young Communist League, only to be rejected for not being “combative” enough: code for not informing on others. Friends were expelled from university or jailed for speaking too freely and my family included people in the military and police, so I had to be careful not to endanger them
From Saipan to Take That: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
SaipanOut now As the Irish national team descend on a small island in the Pacific to prepare for the 2002 World Cup, an epic falling out between manager Mick McCarthy (Steve Coogan) and top player Roy Keane (Éanna Hardwicke) is looming, in this sports drama loosely based on the infamous real-life spat.No Other ChoiceOut nowKorean auteur Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) enlists Squid Game’s Lee Byung-hun to lead this dark comedy about a man who has recently been made redundant but is so committed to reclaiming his role that he feels he has “no other choice” but to resort to murder.H Is for HawkOut nowBased on the novel by Helen Macdonald, this drama sees Claire Foy play a woman mourning the loss of her father become on the idea of training a hawk. This project isn’t necessarily a natural fit with her life as a graduate fellow at Cambridge. Directed by Philippa Lowthorpe and also starring Brendan Gleeson and Lindsay Duncan
Tell us your UK town of culture nomination
With the search for the UK’s first town of culture under way, we would like to hear your suggestions.Guardian writers’ own nominations include Ramsgate in Kent, Falmouth in Cornwall, Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, and Portobello in Edinburgh. Which town would you nominate, and why?You can tell us your choice for the first UK town of culture using this form.Please include as much detail as possible. Please note, the maximum file size is 5
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