Interview with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Do you hear that? That sound, right? That means that summer is officially here. It means that grown adults just sprint into the street for a frozen dessert shaped like a cartoon. But this summer, Mint Mobile has a better treat. Every plan, including unlimited, is $15 a month. And unlike ice cream, it won't drip down your wrist or look nothing like the picture.

Scott Galloway (0:17)

Does anyone have any cash?

SPEAKER_1 (0:18)

Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. Up front payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12 month plan required.

Jacob Coxon (0:24)

$15 per month equivalent to taxes and fees extra.

SPEAKER_1 (0:26)

New customer offer for initial plan thermoling greater than 50 gigabytes may slow. When network is busy, see terms.

Anderson Cooper (0:32)

Good evening from the newsroom. Could AI, artificial intelligence, kill us all by the end of the decade? That is the terrifying question raised last week by young employee of Anthropic, a leading AI company who resigned. Jacob Coxon is his name. He said many at the company believe that was possible. Then another employee there confirmed that was a widely held concern, suggesting even there was a greater than 10% chance of humanity being wiped out by the end of the decade. Well, tonight, I will ask Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, repeatedly if he believes AI might kill us all by the end of the decade. And I'll tell you right now, he doesn't say no.

As you'll hear in a moment and in depth, he talks a lot about the very real dangers that he himself sees and what in just the last few months has changed in AI that has made him so concerned. You'll also hear tonight, live from Jacob Coxon and Tristan Harris, who has been raising concerns about AI development for a long time. Late today, the president has been rejecting the warnings from Dario Amodei and others, calling it a hoax. Quoting from his social media post, when in the history of business did anyone see the leaders of an industry call for regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy? AI taking over the world, destroying humanity and all other things bad is a hoax.

The president has been working overtime the last few days to quiet the alarm bells going off across the country.

Michael Ian Black (1:58)

We're leading China in AI.

SPEAKER_6 (2:00)

We're the most sophisticated country in the world.

Anderson Cooper (2:03)

And frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins.

Well, the president's truly not alone in framing the issue as an arms race with China. Many other Americans see this as a moment of reckoning for artificial intelligence. Last week, after that Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, resigned warning about humanity's destruction, I asked him how might AI kill all humans?

Jacob Coxon (2:25)

It sounds like something that's not real, but I think it is frighteningly real, and it's easiest to understand it if you think about real things that happened two months ago. So two months ago, open AI agents, AIs hacked into third-party infrastructure, entirely at their own accord, and this was like a concentrated hacking spree that they carried out of their own volition.

And I think that if you extrapolate into the future, the level of capabilities of these AIs, with the same independent volition, they could cause extreme havoc. For example, hacking critical infrastructure, building extinction-level bioweapons.

Anderson Cooper (3:02)

Well, that open AI hacking attack came to be known as the hugging face incident. And as you'll hear in my exclusive interview with Anthropics Dario Amodei, it is one reason he is now calling for major reforms. In fact, Amodei believes in six to twelve months, a swarm of AI agents like the ones that joined together to attack the hugging face in July could take over the entire internet. On Saturday, Amodei released this 3,800-word open letter titled, We Must Pace the Frontier.

In a rare show of unity, Elon Musk and open AI Sam Ullman publicly backed the proposal pretty quickly of their AI rival. Today, Vice President Vance was asked about how Amodei's call to slow down and regulate artificial intelligence. That's what he said.

SPEAKER_6 (3:46)

There are obviously risks to AI. There are some benefits to AI.

I have to say, just personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them. It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse.

Anderson Cooper (4:06)

Well, now my exclusive interview with Dario Amodei, we spoke on Saturday just after he released his proposal for the future of AI.