Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is back with another extended essay, The Adolescence of Technology.
This is the follow up to his previous essay Machines of Loving Grace. In MoLG, Dario talked about some of the upsides of AI. Here he talks about the dangers, and the need to minimize them while maximizing the benefits.
In many aspects this was a good essay. Overall it is a mild positive update on Anthropic. It was entirely consistent with his previous statements and work.
I believe the target is someone familiar with the basics, but who hasn’t thought that much about any of this and is willing to listen given the source. For that audience, there are a lot of good bits. For the rest of us, it was good to affirm his positions.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t major problems, especially with its treatment of those more worried, and its failure to present stronger calls to action.
He is at his weakest when he is criticising those more worried than he is. In some cases the description of those positions is on the level of a clear strawman. The central message is, ‘yes this might kill [...]
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Outline:
(02:22) Blame The Imperfect
(08:58) Anthropic's Term Is 'Powerful AI'
(09:33) Dario Doubles Down on Dates of Dazzling Datacenter Daemons
(10:27) How You Gonna Keep Em Down On The Server Farm
(15:04) If He Wanted To, He Would Have
(15:15) So Will He Want To?
(22:22) The Balance of Power
(24:29) Defenses of Autonomy
(29:28) Weapon of Mass Destruction
(31:48) Defenses Against Biological Attacks
(34:54) One Model To Rule Them All
(38:06) Defenses Against Autocracy
(41:11) They Took Our Jobs
(44:14) Don't Let Them Take Our Jobs
(46:18) Economic Concentrations of Power
(48:16) Unknown Unknowns
(50:24) Oh Well Back To Racing
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First published:
January 30th, 2026
Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dho4JQytfHWXtTvkt/on-the-adolescence-of-technology
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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
