Dario Amodei's Tabloid Era
Honestly, I almost feel a little sorry for Dario Amodei. That essay-writing, sweater-loving nerd is getting the treatment normally meted out to grim-eyed murderers and sex-romping celebrities.
Put another way: The New York Post has discovered him in earnest. Well, him and effective altruism. By my count, the outlet has published more than a dozen stories mentioning Amodei or effective altruism in the past week. One had a headline describing Anthropic’s staff as “cult-like,” the same label it had applied a while back to effective altruists in general. (C’mon, fellas! Invest in a thesaurus.)
A second Post headline gave prominent attention to President Donald Trump’s recent criticism of Amodei’s suggestion for an AI industry slowdown: a “SICK conspiracy,” Trump called it, the capital letters all his. A third headline described METR, the AI research outfit Amodei says he’ll use to independently assess his company’s safeguards, as a group of “super-woke globalists.” And a fourth headline on an editorial board piece thundered out: “Beware the ‘effective altruists.’”
Eeesh. I wonder what would excite the mouth breathers at the Post more: another Amodei doom dump—or JonBenét Ramsey’s parents finally saying they did it?
Sure, Amodei has steadily attracted more and more—and more—media attention over the past five months, and so has effective altruism, which obviously got a lot of attention in the Sam Bankman-Fried days, too. But there’s something about watching Amodei and the EA set get turned into daily tabloid fodder right now that strikes me as an important marker of where the broader world’s conversation about AI stands. It’s loud, wacky as heck—and candidly, I worry it’s a precursor to something darker.
I sat here trying to wrap my mind around it, and I started to get a headache like the one that sits at the bottom of a bourbon bottle. The Post is channeling a populist antipathy for Amodei and effective altruists that’s rooted in a dislike for their AI apocalypse talk. Yet at the same time there’s populist concern that AI may very well invite Armageddon: A recent survey by Politico found that 63% of U.S. adults believe AI could eventually destroy the world. So in sum, there’s widespread concern about destructive AI—and scorn for the people who want everyone to focus on it. As I said, it’s wacky.
Put aside AI catastrophe for a second. The bigger reason people dislike Amodei and the effective altruists is because they perceive them as the influential, liberal elite. It’s this potent derision that really animates the Post, and I find it unsettling. It’s the same type of addled, conspiracy-minded resentment that makes people still believe in Pizzagate and rigged voting machines.
What I find especially facile is the assumption that effective altruists and those who share their beliefs actually do wield gigantic influence over AI. I’d argue that they actually don’t. Articles by the Post and other outlets portray effective altruists as a wide cabal, but they only ever really mention the same three people over and over: Amodei; his sister, Daniela; and Facebook billionaire Dustin Moskovitz.
Look, three people simply do not make an all-powerful cabal! I keep thinking about that disconnect between assumption and reality—probably because I’ve devoted enormous thought lately to considering who really does have clout in AI as we put together our debut list of Tech’s 50 Most Influential People. Yes, the Amodei siblings are on the list, and they’re the No. 1 and No. 2 figures at a gigantic company. But that’s…it. Not a single other person on our list belongs to the effective altruism crowd.
I don’t write this as a passionate Amodei fanboy, nor as someone who finds effective altruism especially appealing: It’s an ideology that can be channeled into single-minded glumness when someone swallows the whole pill bottle and commits fully to it. A conversation with an effective altruist about the future is about as much fun as discussing foie gras with a vegan. It’s just that the concerns about Amodei and the effective altruists are beginning to strongly remind me of previous worries about lizard people taking over Congress.
Perhaps I’m making too much of those Post stories I mentioned. Still, with nearly 100 million readers a month, the Post is big enough to inspire other outlets to follow its lead, covering Amodei and AI with a sensationalism rooted in gassed-up anxiety and quarter-truths. Amodei’s the guy getting tarred and feathered today. It’d be a mistake to assume he’ll be the last.