Thea Vales

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's message to everyone using Claude or ChatGPT at home: "I won't lie to you. There are real dangers." Amodei was asked what he would say to an ordinary person using AI at home, someone like the aunt of his interviewer, Jo Ling Kent. He started by naming the mood: "Look, my message is there's a lot of fear right now." From there, he took that fear head-on with three points: the benefits are real, the dangers are real, and you should get a say in what happens next. First, the benefits: "First of all, as always, this is a great technology and it has lots of positive uses. So let's just start with that. You know, we have hundreds of millions of people using our technology every week to do wonderful things." He points to messages that land in his inbox regularly: "Every week I get an email from someone who says this, you know, I was talking to Claude and Claude diagnosed this disease that my doctors had missed. I get emails like this every week. So, let's not forget that." Then came the part he says too much of the industry wouldn't admit: "But in terms of the dangers of the technology, I won't lie to you. There are real dangers." He calls out his own industry directly: "And I think for too long the industry lied to people about the fact that this technology had risk. The idea was that they would present it as positive as [possible]. We've never done that, but too much of the industry did that." For Amodei, the fix starts with honesty and extends to the person at home: "And so it starts with telling the truth. And the truth is there are risks. Risks are real. But also, you have a say in how these risks are addressed." He explains what that looks like in practice: "We're doing the best we can to work with government to create the proper oversight of this technology to give voters and elected officials a say in how this technology is deployed. And we want to work with those folks as much as we can." His goal is for everyday users to get both the benefits and a voice in the decisions: "I want everyone to feel like they're appreciating the incredible benefits of the technology, but also they have a say in their voice and in their vote in determining how this technology is deployed." "This isn't a decision for a few people alone. This is a decision for everyone." He's also clear about how much is riding on it: "But it is an important decision. I won't lie that the stakes aren't high."