WARNING

AI Boss Sounds Alarm Over Imminent ‘Test’ for Humankind

“The years in front of us will be impossibly hard,” the CEO of one of the world’s most prominent AI companies wrote.

The man behind the company that has developed some of the most advanced large language model (LLM) systems in the world, and one of the most powerful AI systems globally, has written a 38-page essay warning about the very technology his company is helping to advance. “It is somewhat awkward to say this as the CEO of an AI company, but I think the next tier of risk is actually AI companies themselves,” Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, wrote on Monday. Amodei warned that if AI continues to develop at its current pace, it could soon surpass humans at “essentially everything.” He said this rapid advancement could lead to massive job losses, rising terror threats, the empowerment of authoritarian regimes, and a situation where leaders resist imposing restrictions due to the power and money involved. “I believe we are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species,” he said. For this reason, Amodei wrote that he penned the essay to “jolt people awake” to the dangers of AI. “The years in front of us will be impossibly hard, asking more of us than we think we can give,” he wrote. The essay follows a “Statement on Superintelligence,” released in October to call for restrictions on AI, which has been signed by more than 100,000 people, including AI pioneers, celebrities, royals, politicians, and business leaders.