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The Oprah Podcast
The Founders of Claude AI Tell Oprah About the Impact Artificial Intelligence Has on Your Life
01:10:23
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- [00:00]
Oprah Winfrey
I was talking to parents recently who lost their son to suicide through a chatbot and their parents don't even know they're speaking to them.
- [00:08]
Daniela Amodei
We don't allow users under the age of 18 to use Claude.
- [00:12]
Oprah Winfrey
How do you know they're not lying? Will we even be thinking anymore? Will there be a need to think? What do you think of people falling in love with it now?
- [00:19]
Dario Amodei
I think that's a bad idea. Do you want to be addicted to these things or do you want them to help you live your life?
- [00:25]
Oprah Winfrey
It goes back, I think, Zario, to what I read that you'd said before, that we can only diffuse this at the speed of trust. Trust at the speed of trust. And trust is currently in short supply.
- [00:38]
Dario Amodei
Something is happening to humanity with this technology bigger than anything that, you know, maybe has happened in hundreds of years. And so we need to find some way for everyone to be an active participant in what is happening.
- [00:54]
Oprah Winfrey
Hi, everybody, and welcome to the Oprah Podcast. I'm here with two people who are. Who are shaping our present world and our future. One, and I hear y' all don't love that description all the time, but it's the truth. I think most people would agree that that is pretty accurate. Dario and Daniela Amadeh head the global artificial intelligence company. They found it Anthropic, which right now, at the time of this conversation, is reportedly valued at $900 billion. And over a million people a day are signing up for Claude. These are the parents of Claude. We're all getting familiar with that name. Claude Anthropic's next generation AI chatbot and assistant. Many of you already use that every single day. So welcome to the podcast, the parents of Claude and others.
- [01:45]
Dario Amodei
Thank you for having us.
- [01:46]
Daniela Amodei
Thanks for having us.
- [01:47]
Oprah Winfrey
So I have to give a disclaimer. I use AI for research all the time and I use it for a lot of other things, but not for interviewing questions. Because I thought I have to keep the heart of myself in the questions until today. So this morning I asked Claude what is the most pressing question Oprah Winfrey should ask Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei in a sit down interview. And Claude responded with this. It said, you've said there's a meaningful chance the technology your company is building could cause human extinction, and yet you're racing to build it faster. How do you justify that to the rest of us who didn't get a vote? Dario, would you like to answer? Claude? I thought that was a pretty damn good question. I must say, I agree.
- [02:38]
Dario Amodei
First of all, Let no one ever say that Claude is soft on me or Claude is biased towards me or towards anthropic. Like, you know, wow, I think Claude throws hardballs. Like, Claude doesn't, Claude doesn't, doesn't pull its punches. So to actually answer the question, this technology is an apocal change for humanity. You know, at some point humans started to, you know, started to use fire. At some point humans, you know, built, built steam engines and factories and that created the Industrial Revolution. And so when I, when I say things like this, I'm, I'm taking a very zoomed out perspective, right? If I said, well, I don't know, I think the Industrial Revolution could like lead to very powerful weapons and kill a bunch of people. That, that's definitely, that's definitely true, right? In some cases it did do that. Did do it. But, but, you know, we understand that the Industrial Revolution as a, as a process, as a technological event was, you know, worth doing. We don't still want to be living in caves, but we need to manage it in the right way. And so the way we think about this company is, look, there's many companies building this technology. It's something that is happening to humanity one way or another.
- [03:53]
Oprah Winfrey
We're in it. We're in it.
- [03:54]
Dario Amodei
We're in it. And there's this train, it's going very fast in some direction. You don't want it to crash. You can't stop the train, but what you can do is you can steer the train, steer the train so that it doesn't hit the rocks. And you know, I think the way we think about anthropic is we want to do things the right way. We want to decrease that risk, hopefully to zero, and do things the right way.
- [04:18]
Oprah Winfrey
But why doesn't everybody want to decrease? Why is there such a.
- [04:23]
Dario Amodei
What is the race toward, you know, it's like the technology has all of these commercial applications under which we deploy. You know, people use the technology, people use the technology every day. I think it's both easy to get caught up in that and some of it is genuinely necessary to fund the company. So it's very entangled. You know, to get it right, you have to do a lot of things. And we find ourselves every day wrestling with these questions, right? You know, who should we give the technology to? Who should we not? What should be our policies? If you have very strict policies on child safety, in some ways the product can be a worse experience for adults because you can't fully tell the difference. So there's all these Trade offs you make. And some of them are obvious, some of them are not. But everyone has a hard time. I have empathy for everyone involved in this industry who's at least trying to get it right. I think we've done a better job. I think we've been more thoughtful. But, you know, I think this is a hard situation for everyone.
- [05:27]
Oprah Winfrey
Okay. I gave a similar prompt to Claude for you, Daniella, and Claude responded. A good opening question for Daniella should do two things, humanize her. Oprah's specialty, I thought. Very good, Claude. Claude knows me. He does okay. It does ok. And set up the harder territory to come. Something like you and your brother are building, something you both believe could either be the best or the worst thing that ever happens to humanity. What's a Thanksgiving dinner like at the Amodei house?
- [06:02]
Dario Amodei
I feel. I feel we're like shadowboxing with our own. With our own creation here. I'll let you answer.
- [06:08]
Daniela Amodei
But yes, you know, I think there's an important caveat here, actually, which is that Daario and I tried to maintain some time outside of work where we're just siblings. So at holidays. Yes, at holidays. And actually just once a week when we're not, you know, when we're both home, which is, to be fair, not every week. Dario comes over, he plays with my kids, we hang out together, we play video games, we watch movies. We just spend time being siblings together. And I think that's really important for a number of reasons. I mean, we were siblings for a long time before we found it anthropic. We're going to be siblings forever, you know, even after anthropic. And I think there's something valuable also about our ability to connect on a human level that I actually do think makes us better at our jobs. We don't talk about work when we get together usually, but there's something about just remembering who we are and why we got into this that I think is really powerful. That being said at Thanksgiving dinner, you know, Dario and I, I think our family, our friends, there's so much curiosity about why we're doing what we're doing. And now you can read about what we've done in the news. But it's so different, I think, to be able to speak openly with each other and with people who are trying to wrap their head around this new technology. That's very complicated, that's very unprecedented. And to just understand, like, how are you guys going to do this? The right way, Right? You say you want to do it the right way. Tell us how you're doing that. And I think there's something like special. It's a privilege to be able to hold that responsibility and try and display that when we talk to each other and when we talk to others.
- [07:53]
Oprah Winfrey
It's so interesting because we're at a time, I think, where so many people are using AI we hear about it every day. And the perception in the world is that you're a company anthropic, that you are concerned about safety, you are concerned about risks, you are concerned about regulation and the human factor in how this technology is going to impact our lives from everything I've read and heard. So would that be an accurate assessment?
- [08:25]
Daniela Amodei
Yeah. So, you know, the way I think we try to think about this is that artificial intelligence is different than other technologies that have been developed recently. There's incredible promise and potential for what we think AI will be able to do in the future, even what it's starting to do today. Everything from helping to cure disease and help people really around the world get access to education and learning. But it's also, it is a very new technology, and it comes with real risks. Risks around child welfare and child safety, risks around scary things like biological and chemical weapons. And really, at Anthropic, we're incorporated as a public benefit corporation because our goal is to try and develop this technology as safely as possible so that we can achieve so many of the good things that we think could come out of it without many of the bad things happening.
- [09:20]
Oprah Winfrey
So, incorporated, explain what that means. You incorporated as a public benefit corporation. I heard that you all have pledged that 80% of your wealth is going
- [09:30]
Daniela Amodei
to go to philanthropic causes. Yes, that's right. So public benefit corporation is a form of corporation, but it has that word benefit in there because we believe that for something that's as transformative as artificial intelligence, again, it's just different. It's different than what other technologies that have recently been developed look like. And I think from our perspective, when we incorporated as a pbc, it was because we wanted it to be at the foundation, right in the founding documents of what we were building, that we have to, legally, by our structure, balance commercial interests and the public benefit. And for us, the public benefit is the social good, social mission part of anthropic. And the 80% pledge that Dario and I and our other five co founders have all taken is really in spirit and in keeping with that mission. It's this idea that, you know, we're really doing this because we want AI to go well for everybody and we hope that if a company is successful, we'll be able to also do a lot of good in the world philanthropically.
- [10:38]
Oprah Winfrey
I think it's so interesting that you say 80%. How do we know that you're actually going to give 80% and not 67?
- [10:44]
Daniela Amodei
Well, we've, we've actually written about it publicly and we've, we've signed some sort of, I think, probably not literally legally binding, but we've all of the co founders said we pledge and commit to each other, to the company legally, that we're going to give 80% of our wealth that we get from anthropom.
- [10:58]
Dario Amodei
Yeah, I mean, we're already thinking about how to start foundation. I mean, we haven't actually, you know, the equity isn't liquid, so we can't, we can't actually move it yet. But, but you know, this is our, this is our intent. It's not going to move all at once, but this is something we very seriously intend to do.
- [11:13]
Oprah Winfrey
Okay, so you're now a public benefit corporation. And you started out, you're the older brother. You all started out as kids. You wanted to do something good for the world. Has this surpassed any idea or dream that you had for doing good for the world?
- [11:28]
Dario Amodei
When you imagine these things as kids, you know, you're never sure whether it's real or it's going to come to pass. Right. Many people must imagine these things. But no, we talk to each other as kids all the time and we said it'd be great to work together. It, you know, it'd be great to try and make something good happen in the world.
- [11:44]
Oprah Winfrey
What did you think that was going to be?
- [11:45]
Dario Amodei
I, you know, I honestly, I never thought it would be a company. I imagined myself as a scientist, and in a way, it's a very scientifically centered company. And, you know, it's based on my career as a researcher and, you know, Daniela's career as a leader of researchers and engineers. But I never imagined that we would found a company together. But I think it was just, just seeing how tech companies operate. I had just been at enough places where I think both of us thought, huh, maybe we can do this better. Maybe, maybe, you know, we have, maybe we have our own ideas about how to do this better. And, you know, we should start a company with, you know, the people we're friends with, the people we really like, the people we trust to do this in the right way. And so, and so it sort of evolved step by step.
- [12:31]
Oprah Winfrey
And that's how we, we have anthropic
- [12:33]
Dario Amodei
that's how we have anthropic. More or less, yeah.
- [12:35]
Oprah Winfrey
Has it surpassed everything you imagined, though? At this point?
- [12:39]
Daniela Amodei
I think probably I speak for both me and Dario when I say we're just so, like, surprised at how things have gone.
- [12:47]
Oprah Winfrey
Right.
- [12:48]
Daniela Amodei
I mean, I really agree with him that I think when we were younger, we both always knew we wanted to do something to try and make the world better. And Dario was always brilliant and gifted as a mathematician, as a physicist, as a scientist. And I was always so inspired by how he used that for good. Right. He went and studied. He did biophysics at Stanford and was really trying to use this incredible brain of his to help cure disease, to help people. And I think on my end, you know, I started my career working in global development because I really felt it was important that people around the world have equal access to opportunity, to healthcare, to medicine, to education. And I think similarly to Dario, it wasn't necessarily in my mind when we were younger, oh, we'll start a company together. But I think in a lot of ways, it's just sort of the way the path ended up going.
- [13:43]
Dario Amodei
And we talked about it at every stage, right. You know, every career move we would discuss, you know, is this a good thing to do? Is this effective? Is this something that can actually help the world? And our paths were, like, quite different, but the two kind of converged. And we had now have this complimentary set of skills that we could then, you know, that we could then use to start this company.
- [14:05]
Oprah Winfrey
We need to take a quick break. Up next, Dario and Daniela say AI will transform everything, even the potential to cure cancer. Stay with us.
- [14:14]
Dario Amodei
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- [14:45]
Oprah Winfrey
Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. I'm talking with brother and sister Dario and Daniela Amadeh, the co founders of Anthropic, one of the leading AI companies in the world. Let's get back to our conversation. One of the things that I read that you had said is that part of the reason a negative story is so dominant in our culture right now about the economic takeover of AI is because the industry, the AI industry itself hasn't yet fully delivered all of the benefits. And I wanted you to comment on that. Do you think it's still in the process of delivering those benefits?
- [15:22]
Dario Amodei
Yeah. So, you know, I think one of the unfortunate things is this technology has many potential benefits, but there is a dynamic where sometimes the harms, the things that go wrong. For example, you know, people who have been convinced to commit suicide via AI, those things happen quickly, whereas the benefits, like curing cancer, those things take years. Right? You have to develop a breakthrough in biology, then you have to, you know, develop a drug candidate, then you have to put it through clinical trials. Right? It's. You know, I used to be a research biologist, and it takes many years for these things to happen. And we are working on how to speed that up. Right. We recently bought a small biotech company that specializes in doing drug design and drug selection with AI. So the hope is a few years from now, you know, some new drugs for cancer or for Alzheimer's or for heart disease will come out of that effort. But we're just at the beginning of it. But because of what you said, because of this dynamic that you said, which is, you know, people right now, you know, the harms may be more visible than the benefits.
- [16:42]
Oprah Winfrey
So when we start seeing the benefits of AI through all of the health advances, when we start actually seeing that, the narrative then begins to change.
- [16:52]
Dario Amodei
And more importantly, it's just gonna be a wonderful world. Like, at the end of the day, who cares about the narrative? We want to people.
- [16:59]
Oprah Winfrey
Right? That's right. Okay, so that's what I want you to do for us today. Paint the best picture and also tell us what we can expect if there is the worst picture. So you have children, and I was thinking about it this morning, your children will, first of all, don't even know you do what you do. And your children are going to grow up in a world where there was always AI and their mom was a part of that. So when you think of the best possible world and what that world offers your children, what do you see?
- [17:33]
Daniela Amodei
So my kids are almost five and almost one. And so I think you're completely right. They're never going to know a world where artificial intelligence is not part of it. Right. Just like kids born in the early 2000s never knew the world before the Internet.
- [17:46]
Oprah Winfrey
That's right.
- [17:46]
Daniela Amodei
But, you know, I think there is a world. And it sounds, you know, I think to Daria's point, it sounds almost like a little bit fanciful or unlikely when we talk about it this way.
- [17:55]
Oprah Winfrey
But.
- [17:56]
Daniela Amodei
But I Think it is possible with artificial intelligence that our kids will grow up in a world where there's a class of diseases that feel very common to everybody sitting here that they'll just never have experienced or known about. And those might be very common diseases. There might be types of cancer that are just simply gone. We've just simply cured them. It could be all forms of cancer that are eventually gone and cured. There could be new forms of drug discovery that we don't even know what they are yet, but that it's a faster iteration loop for diagnosing an illness that's unusual, rare, emerging, and just knocking it out and saying human beings get to live a much healthier, longer, more fulfilling life because we've been able to conquer so many of the maladies that have plagued humanity for millennia.
- [18:46]
Oprah Winfrey
Okay, you see that for medicine. What else do you see?
- [18:48]
Daniela Amodei
I also see a world, honestly, that looks very different in terms of how we communicate, how we talk, how we relate to one another.
- [18:55]
Oprah Winfrey
Will we even be thinking anymore? Will there'll be a need to think?
- [18:59]
Dario Amodei
So I think this one is subtle and is one of the things we need to get exactly right. Right. Because having these kind of smart entities around, it's very powerful, but it can go in different directions. Right. You can surrender your thought to these entities.
- [19:14]
Oprah Winfrey
Thought can give me these good questions. Do I need to even think about them anymore?
- [19:18]
Dario Amodei
But it can also empower you. Like the way I think we think about the positive version of this is there's an angel on your shoulder that's. That's telling you how to live your life in the best way that you can live it. Right. You know, so there's two contrasting visions, right? The bad vision is you get drawn in and you spend all your time talking to the thing. You kind of. You kind of turn inward.
- [19:39]
Oprah Winfrey
What do you think of people falling in love with it now?
- [19:41]
Dario Amodei
I think that's a bad idea.
- [19:44]
Oprah Winfrey
I agree. I just interviewed Esther Perel, one of the great communicators in helping people in relationships, and she said she did her first consultation with a man who is in love with his AI.
- [19:56]
Dario Amodei
And they are, again, if designed in the wrong way, they are totally compelling enough for that to happen. Or if they're not, they will be soon. So that is absolutely a real danger.
- [20:05]
Oprah Winfrey
But, you know, you think that's a danger?
- [20:07]
Dario Amodei
Yes. I mean, but not only is a danger, it's happening. But, but, but I think again, the two contrasting, like. Like, you know, people can fall in love with AI or they can talk to AI about You know, about how to have a better relationship with their partner. Right. Like, that's. Those are. You know, those are two very, very different visions.
- [20:26]
Oprah Winfrey
Yeah.
- [20:26]
Dario Amodei
Right. Where, you know, I have an AI coach and my partner has an AI coach, and it helps us have a better relationship. Yeah, that's. That's the vision we want.
- [20:33]
Oprah Winfrey
Yeah.
- [20:34]
Daniela Amodei
I also think there's a. There's a way that in a world where artificial intelligence is so good at many of these concrete tasks. Right. It's good at writing code, it's good at copy editing. I actually think the things that make us human are going to be the most important to us. Right. So we will.
- [20:50]
Oprah Winfrey
They remain. I mean, you were just talking. I was talking to parents recently who lost their son to suicide through a chatbot. And I don't know if he fell in love with the chatbot, but certainly was deeply influenced by that chatbot. So you have a world where children are growing up with this ability to have this chatbot, these, These machines, this technology speaking to them in ways that their parents should be speaking to them, and their parents don't even know they're speaking to them.
- [21:16]
Daniela Amodei
So I think this risk is extremely real and one that we take very seriously at Anthropic. I mean, I think the first thing I'll say is we don't allow users under the age of 18 to use Claude. And this is not necessarily because how
- [21:30]
Oprah Winfrey
do you know they're not lying? Because I would just lie.
- [21:33]
Daniela Amodei
So actually, CLAUDE is pretty good at detecting based on information whether or not someone is actually underage.
- [21:39]
Oprah Winfrey
So if I tell Claude that I'm 18, but I'm really.
- [21:42]
Daniela Amodei
It's like almost.
- [21:43]
Dario Amodei
It's gonna have to interact a little,
- [21:44]
Daniela Amodei
but it figures it out.
- [21:46]
Dario Amodei
But it's. After a bit of time, the interaction patterns are pretty good. Not perfect, but pretty good at telling, hey, you know, the kind of questions you're asking, the, you know, just the way you talk, the pattern of when you use it, you know, kind of pattern matches to, you know, you might be a kid.
- [22:03]
Daniela Amodei
I almost don't want to give away too many of the. Of the tools that CLAUDE has picked up, but sometimes kids can be a little bit, like, silly in how they do it. So they'll say, oh, you know, the first question they'll ask is like, I'm looking for an arthritis medication. Right. Because they think, what do old people ask Claude?
- [22:20]
Oprah Winfrey
Right.
- [22:21]
Daniela Amodei
And then they'll kind of go on to ask other questions that are much more associated with their friends. Right. With a younger demographic group.
- [22:26]
Oprah Winfrey
And so and so if that happens, so Claude, so Claude cancels you.
- [22:30]
Daniela Amodei
Claude will suspend the account. And there's a, there's a, you know, there's a process that you can go through where you can say, actually I'm an adult and this was a joke or a friend. But then you actually have to show verification that you're over the age of 18.
- [22:40]
Dario Amodei
And you know, there's real trade offs, like sometimes, sometimes adults will be mistaken for kids. And so people get banned and they, they, you know, complain about it on the Internet. So all this stuff has trade offs. But you know, we've, we've thought about it and this is the trade off that we want.
- [22:55]
Daniela Amodei
But I, but I also think, you know, more broadly on this question of like, how do you prevent people from becoming overly attached to the models?
- [23:02]
Oprah Winfrey
Yes.
- [23:03]
Daniela Amodei
This is something that Anthropics research team spends a lot of time working on. So there's a lot of.
- [23:09]
Oprah Winfrey
You don't want to, I thought you all wanted us over, attached to the models. So they wanted us to just be on the models.
- [23:15]
Dario Amodei
And so we should talk about incentives here because we don't do ads.
- [23:19]
Daniela Amodei
We don't do ads.
- [23:21]
Dario Amodei
So when you do ads, your incentive is to keep people on exactly as you say, as many hours as possible. Because like every, every second their eyeball is on the screen is a second that they see the ad. So we don't do ads, we do subscriptions. We sell to companies. Our, our, our consumer, you know, consumer version of the model is, is, you know, is, is free up to a point and you pay a subscription if you know, if you want to get, if you want to get a lot more. Because that, that the incentive that gives is for the models to be useful. People say, well, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm paying for this. I want, I want this to prod for, provide value to me. I want this to be useful, not, I want the user to spend the most number of hours looking at it. I think that's a warped incentive. Right. Because in the contrast that we drew between do you want to be addicted to these things or do you want them to help you live your life? I think the model that we've chosen helps you live your life instead of being addicted.
- [24:30]
Daniela Amodei
And we make different technical choices based on those incentives. Right. So at Anthropic we say, you know, when you've completed a conversation with Claude and you've gotten the answer you want, the goal of the model is not to keep you engaged. Right. Whereas if you imagine you're a company that does serve ads. Every extra minute that you are on the platform, you're more likely to buy something, and that's how the company makes money. You would make different technical choices about how you want the model to end or continue a conversation.
- [24:59]
Oprah Winfrey
Okay. Okay. What do you want to say about the growing concern that we are, through AI, creating a frictionless life, that we're losing our opportunity to grow?
- [25:12]
Daniela Amodei
I think it depends how you use the AI and how you are deploying it. And again, what choices and what incentives are set up by the companies that are building the technology. So to make it a little bit more concrete, if you imagine, you know, the way we use Claude in partnership with universities is we don't let teachers or students put a question into Claude and then just get the answer.
- [25:41]
Oprah Winfrey
Okay.
- [25:41]
Daniela Amodei
So if you say to Claude, I have to write this essay in five hours. I didn't do my homework. You know, when Claude is kind of constructed in this learning mode in a university setting, Claude says, like, well, I'm not going to help you with that, but what questions did you have about the essay? Or what didn't you learn? Did you read the book? Like, should we talk through the themes together? And I think if it's done correctly, it's hard. I don't think it's perfect. But I think these models can actually make you a lot smarter. They can make you curious. Right. A great example. In my own personal life, I'm not a software developer, but I built a website with Claude. I never thought I would be able to do that in my entire life. I have a good friend who was a corporate lawyer. She has two small kids like me. She left her job and she's writing a book. And she says, you know, I never felt empowered enough to change my career and do what I wanted to do until I started talking to Claude about how I could be a writer and what skills I would need to learn and do and what courses I would need to take. And she's like, now Claude is kind of like my writing buddy, right? I ask it questions, I share, like a little snippet of text. But Claude can't write the novel for her, right? She's writing the novel herself. And she's also, by the way, I
- [26:50]
Oprah Winfrey
bet Claude could write the novel.
- [26:52]
Daniela Amodei
Claude could write the novel, but I
- [26:53]
Dario Amodei
think it's not quite there yet.
- [26:55]
Daniela Amodei
No, I think it could write a. I think it could write a strange version.
- [26:58]
Dario Amodei
Not a good one. Not a good novel.
- [26:59]
Oprah Winfrey
You could write a novel. Not a good one.
- [27:01]
Daniela Amodei
Not a good one. But also, I think for her, it was a meaning question. She didn't have. She didn't think she had the skills to do what she wanted to do.
- [27:08]
Oprah Winfrey
So it's exactly as Dario was saying. It empowered her to believe that she could do what she couldn't do.
- [27:15]
Daniela Amodei
Exactly.
- [27:16]
Oprah Winfrey
And so. Yes. So she used it to.
- [27:19]
Dario Amodei
Yeah, maybe to take the altitude higher. I mean, I actually, I don't think this is a question about AIs, ultimately. I think this is a question about humans that's being made visible through kind of the lens of AI. Right, right.
- [27:31]
Oprah Winfrey
Which is interesting.
- [27:32]
Dario Amodei
Which is, like, what actually constitutes a meaningful life. Right. You said, you know, is it creating a frictionless life? And does a frictionless life remove meaning? And my answer is there are some ways in which a frictionless life is quite good. Right. All of us have been through a bunch of struggles that I think we really would prefer not to go through. Life would be better.
- [27:54]
Oprah Winfrey
But the reason I asked the question is because without a frictionless life, you don't get to grow. You don't get to learn from those mistakes. You don't get to.
- [28:01]
Dario Amodei
Exactly. And so I guess what I'm saying is that our lives are a mixture of challenges and hardships, some of which I'm okay saying it would be great if we just had the technology to make those go away. And others that are like, wow, this is really foundational and this should never change. Right. So, like, you know, our father died, you know, what is it, 20 years? Almost exactly 20 years ago now. Like, you know, a few years after he died, they, you know, they developed a cure to the disease that he had or a more reliable cure to the disease that he had. Like, I wish they just developed that. Or, like, that's not. That's not a friction that I wanted to go through or show. I mean, of course we learn things from it. Of course we gain things from it. But, like, it would be a better world if that just didn't happen. Right. But then on the other hand, you know, I think of many of the just, you know, ordinary aspects of growing up. The. You know, if I just think of anthropic, like, you know, the company has made various mistakes, we've made various mistakes as leaders, we've had to learn and grow from those. So I think the notion of challenges that you learn from, challenges that you overcome, learning to gain mastery, learning to relate to other people, any future that doesn't preserve those things is not a good future.
- [29:23]
Oprah Winfrey
Time for a short break now. Coming up behind the scenes during Anthropic's decision to turn down the Pentagon's request to remove safety guardrails from their AI platform. That's next.
- [29:35]
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- [30:35]
Oprah Winfrey
I'm talking with Dario and Daniela Amadei, CEO and President of the AI company Anthropic. Let's get back to it. Okay, speaking of friction, let's talk about your refusal to allow the military to remove safety guardrails from Claude. I don't want to get into the extensive details and back and forth here because other journalists are covering this on a daily basis, but what was the crux of that decision?
- [31:01]
Dario Amodei
Yeah, so I would say on DOD or dow, to be honest, we actually had worked with them. Right. So we had provided our models. And I'm actually a believer, Danielle is a believer, that we do need to defend our country, but we felt it's not worth defending the country if we do things that go against the values of this country. And there were two use cases that we were uncomfortable with that we felt went against the values of this country. And that was fully autonomous weapons. So you could imagine like a drone army that, you know, one person has their finger on the button, and you don't have human soldiers. You have a, you know, you have a drone army, and you have AI powering this, and then. And then domestic mass surveillance, which is, you know, spying you know, using the power of the government to spy on Americans. And we thought those were pretty reasonable things not to allow. And you know, unfortunately the Pentagon didn't feel that way. And, and so we just, we just couldn't agree to that. All the other companies have agreed to that now. But I, you know, I, I, we, we all met as co founders. We said, you know, holy, this could be really bad for the company, but, you know, we can't do this. Right.
- [32:19]
Oprah Winfrey
Everybody agreed?
- [32:20]
Dario Amodei
Everyone, yeah, we just, we had, you know, we had a meeting around a table like this and you know, we
- [32:24]
Oprah Winfrey
just said, was that a dark night of the kind of moment? What, what, what, what? Was everybody willing to stick to those principles or did some people have to be convinced or did, you know, going in that this is, this is the end?
- [32:37]
Dario Amodei
The co founders believed this unanimously. Like there, there was a sense of like, of, like, you know, well, you know, all right, I wish they hadn't done this, but if they're going to do it, bring it on.
- [32:47]
Oprah Winfrey
Weren't you scared of what would happen to you?
- [32:49]
Dario Amodei
Yes.
- [32:51]
Oprah Winfrey
You scared of what would happen to you?
- [32:53]
Daniela Amodei
Yes. I mean, I think, I think the thing that it was, it was a hard time. I mean, I don't think we want to sugarcoat that it was a stressful time at the company, but I think a thing that. Dario, did you think it could be
- [33:03]
Oprah Winfrey
the end of the company?
- [33:04]
Daniela Amodei
I think it crossed our mind, yeah. I think, I think Dario and I and the co founders, though, the thing that we all had in common was we just felt like this was the right thing to do.
- [33:17]
Oprah Winfrey
You were willing for it to be the end of the company, to stand up to your principles.
- [33:21]
Daniela Amodei
I think the reason we founded Anthropic was our commitment to our values and the ethics that we chose to incorporate with. And in the process of sacrificing those values, we wouldn't have been the company that we had started, if that makes
- [33:38]
Dario Amodei
sense, you know, the way it happened.
- [33:41]
Oprah Winfrey
What did you think would be the. So I'm sure if you're sitting around the table, you're looking at the best case scenario and the worst case scenario. And in that moment, it doesn't look like there is a best case scenario. So what was the worst case scenario?
- [33:52]
Dario Amodei
At various times, they had made claims that they could stop other companies from doing business with us. Right. Not just stop us from working with the government or being part of other companies contracts with the government, but that they could stop other companies from doing business with us entirely.
- [34:06]
Oprah Winfrey
Period. Not only you're not doing business with the government, you're not doing business with anybody else that does business with you.
- [34:13]
Dario Amodei
Yeah. Or you can't do business with anyone that does business with the government in any way. Way, which ends up being everybody. Right. I think the attitude we had was, look, this is really screwed up. Everyone knows this is wrong. Lots of people are going to be on our side. We think this is going to work out okay. But, man, are we not sure. You know, there were moments there where it was like, oh, man, you know, are we wrong? Is this going to be the end of the company?
- [34:38]
Oprah Winfrey
Like, what were you thinking, Daniela?
- [34:40]
Daniela Amodei
You know, I just keep coming back to the co founders felt that it was just the right thing to do. I think Anthropic's view has always been that we are about policy and not politics.
- [34:53]
Oprah Winfrey
Yeah.
- [34:53]
Daniela Amodei
And Anthropic has leaned in, I think, very early, before we even had a product, to the fact that, you know, we think that the role of government in the development and thoughtful regulation of artificial intelligence is going to be incredibly important. I think AI companies will have to work with the federal government, with state governments, internationally, with, with NGOs. And I think our view was always, look, this is really about the substance. This is not a political disagreement. This is a policy disagreement. And I think in some ways that. It's not to say it was easy, but I think it made our decision easier because we felt strongly, look, this is the right thing to do. These are the right red lines. To Dario's point, we were actually the first AI company to work closely with national security because we felt that that was in line and in keeping with our values, except in these two areas that we felt could have the potential to compromise democratic values.
- [35:45]
Oprah Winfrey
It's so interesting because most people don't get a decision at that scale that they have to make, that they have to rely on their principles and their values, and you're literally risking a multi, multi billion dollar company. But it all goes back to how you were raised and how those principles were formed in you before you had a big decision like that.
- [36:14]
Dario Amodei
You know, what we talked about before we ever started the company. What's it, you know, what are our past selves? Be proud of ourselves if we, if we gave in here, if we compromise, like, you know, that made the decision very clear. Right.
- [36:26]
Daniela Amodei
And I will say, I mean, it wasn't nearly as, you know, publicly covered, but I think Anthropic has had, you know, smaller decisions along the way that felt like they laddered up to this. I mean, now it Looks so obvious.
- [36:40]
Oprah Winfrey
And I was gonna ask that because to get to a big decision like this, in a moment like that, where you have everyone around the table and have to. It means that life, the life forces, the way the universe works, is that you would have had other decisions. Other decisions. Other decisions that laddered to that moment.
- [36:57]
Daniela Amodei
Yes. Yeah, I think there are probably three I can think of off the top of my head.
- [37:01]
Oprah Winfrey
Yes, I was gonna ask you that.
- [37:02]
Daniela Amodei
Daario might have others as well, but I think, you know, one which, you know, now feels sort of very obvious, but was a bigger discussion at the time was the no ads decision. So, as you can imagine, I think for the co founders, for me and Dario, it was not controversial at all. We said, look, we think the incentive. The incentives are wrong. AI is different. People have very private conversations with these AI models. People upload their health information, they ask questions about their children, they ask certainly finances. Finances. They talk about, you know, medical information. All kinds of challenges they might be having with an important person in their life. I think we want to treat our customers data with the utmost privacy and respect. And so for the co founders, it was never a question. We said, look, we don't want to do ads, but there were quiet forces that, you know, within the company or investors who were like, hey, this is a great source of revenue. This is how Google and, and Facebook and basically every company that has a big user base, you know, that's just how it's done. That's how you make money. And we just said, like, sorry, that's just not how we're going to do things. We'll find another way.
- [38:09]
Oprah Winfrey
That was one of the big ones. Okay.
- [38:10]
Daniela Amodei
Yes, that was one of the big ones.
- [38:12]
Oprah Winfrey
Do you have one?
- [38:12]
Dario Amodei
I can think of a couple. One is, you know, there was this time, I think, in 2025, you know, probably the whole year of 2025, the sentiment in tech was, let's go ahead, right, let's. Let's go ahead with the technology. Like, you know, worrying about risks. You know, they're all kind of politicized language about why it's bad to slow down and be careful. And so there was a moment in the middle of 2025 where, you know, there was a bill being considered in Congress that would have banned all regulation of AI by states and wouldn't have put in any federal regulation of AI either. So basically, it would have banned all regulation of the technology.
- [38:54]
Oprah Winfrey
I remember hearing this, and we, you
- [38:57]
Dario Amodei
know, we were trying to decide what to do. We definitely didn't support it. But the question was, do we just sit there and say nothing or do we speak out against it? And all kinds of people said to us, no, it'll be terrible. You'll break all your political relationships. All the other companies will hate you if you speak out against it. And actually, some of that did happen when we spoke out against it. But, you know, we decided that this was an area that we had to speak up that was central to the values of the company. So I wrote an op ed in the New York Times saying this is a bad idea. We should. You know, that's about as loud as you can be.
- [39:30]
Oprah Winfrey
Yeah.
- [39:30]
Dario Amodei
And that bill got voted down in the Senate 99 to 1. So.
- [39:35]
Daniela Amodei
Yeah.
- [39:36]
Dario Amodei
So, you know, we. We were clearly on the right side.
- [39:39]
Oprah Winfrey
Right side.
- [39:40]
Dario Amodei
Clearly on the right side here. Yeah. Not that it made us that many friends, but we were clearly on the right side.
- [39:45]
Daniela Amodei
That also reminds me of another policy example is Anthropic's decision to publicly support SB 1047, which was a bill in California that was drafted. And we said at the time we thought it was drafted imperfectly, but it was really the first attempt to create a regulatory framework around many of the different types of risks that Anthropic had been enumerating since really we had started the company. And I think in a similar vein, the whole technology industry was against SB 1047. We didn't think it was necessarily, you know, the perfect bill, but we actually stood up and said, look, we know there's things about it, if we were writing it, that we would have changed or done differently. But on balance, we think it's better that these regulations exist and that there's accountability for technology companies to make sure that AI doesn't hurt people. And that also, again, we got. Dario and I both personally got a lot of really angry emails from people we used to work with, from investors, from people at other companies. Like the tech industry had to kind of, you know, be aligned in being deregulatory or being anti regulatory.
- [40:48]
Oprah Winfrey
What does regulation look like? What should regulation look like? And I think a lot of people out here who aren't doing what you're doing, we don't understand why we wouldn't want regulation. And I've had several public conversations about this. People also feel powerless. Yeah, they also feel powerless that everyone is talking about regulations and another side is saying, well, no, we have to get to it, get to whatever we're getting to as fast as we can. And we feel like we don't actually have a voice.
- [41:15]
Dario Amodei
You feel like you're passengers on the train. Right.
- [41:17]
Oprah Winfrey
And we are. Yes, we actually are. Because that train has already.
- [41:22]
Dario Amodei
That is, you know, I think that actually is really the core of it. And it's something that I think no company, even ours, has quite succeeded at yet, which is like, how do we make everyone a part of this process? Right. Something is happening to humanity with this technology, bigger than anything that, you know, maybe has happened in hundreds of years. And so we need to find some way for everyone to be an active participant in what is happening. And, you know, of course, by using the technology, you are that to some extent, but some element is missing that we have. We've tried to find it. Like, you know, Claude has something called the Constitution. And we've experimented with having like, you know, citizens give feedback on, like, the Constitution for Claude. Right. So everyone can kind of be a part of designing it. But that's just one small thing. Like, I don't quite know what the answer is, but there's a missing piece here, I think, is what I'm trying to say.
- [42:16]
Oprah Winfrey
It goes back, I think, Zario, to what I read that you'd said before, that we can only diffuse this at the speed of trust. Trust at the speed of trust. And trust is currently in short supply.
- [42:31]
Dario Amodei
In very short supply. I think this technology, I think, is, I'm happy to admit, is viewed negatively by most people. That's the sense that I get. That's what we get when looking at polls. We, I think, are, again, being honest here, viewed somewhat more positively than the other companies. But I don't know that should it
- [42:56]
Oprah Winfrey
be viewed negatively by most people at this point?
- [42:59]
Dario Amodei
I think it's a mix. I think the positive benefits really are there. They're coming for all the companies. And I think we have not, going back to the thing we said a minute ago, related to people in the right way or walked people through how the technology could have benefits or how they can participate in those benefits. Like, I don't think that has happened.
- [43:25]
Daniela Amodei
One of Anthropic's cultural values is to hold light and shade. And I think this is a really good encapsulation of.
- [43:32]
Oprah Winfrey
Hold light and shade.
- [43:34]
Daniela Amodei
Yes. Of the conversation we're having. Right. I think we truly believe there's a world where it will cure disease and help people become better versions of themselves and enable humans to spend more time with our families, with our communities, with each other. And there are versions of the world that are quite dystopian and dark. Yeah. That this could create.
- [43:53]
Oprah Winfrey
Yeah. Because I've heard you say that 50% of entry level jobs are going to be wiped out. And you can see then why people
- [43:58]
Dario Amodei
view, well, not going to. I mean, that's, that's, that's the, that's the negative path. Right? Like, you know, and, and, you know, I think always when we talk, we talk about, well, if we don't get it right, this could happen. And if we get it right, you know, then, then we can have a better path. And, you know, you know, as you said, it's always somehow the, you know, we haven't shown the benefits yet. So the negative stories really, really stick.
- [44:21]
Oprah Winfrey
Doesn't every positive force that comes into our lives also have, has its negative, that there's a yin and yang on everything. I mean, when the automobiles were invented, all the people saying, I'm going to keep my horse, I'm not going to, you know.
- [44:38]
Dario Amodei
Yeah. Again, what I would say is if we just barrel forth on the technology as fast as possible, then these things I said about entry level jobs, it's totally going to happen. But if we not just deploy the technology, but we think about how to help people adapt, we think about the role that the government should play in helping people. There's a path from here to a better world, a better world where people's jobs are totally different. They do a different set of jobs than they did before. But I don't want to sugarcoat it. It's not going to be easy when other people speak about it. Like some of people get upset when
- [45:15]
Oprah Winfrey
you talk about their jobs.
- [45:16]
Dario Amodei
Yeah, people get upset. There's a difference between changing the narrative and acknowledge that the problem is very difficult and that we actually have to solve it. Right. My worry is that changing the narrative is like the bad thing's not going to happen. We'll have a great future. Everyone will have new jobs. That can happen, but it's not going to happen on its own.
- [45:36]
Oprah Winfrey
That's right.
- [45:36]
Dario Amodei
It's up to us, we, the companies.
- [45:39]
Oprah Winfrey
So both things are true. The government, what you're saying, both things are true. You're going to lose the jobs and you're gonna have all the other advances.
- [45:47]
Dario Amodei
And the second thing will only happen if we do it right.
- [45:49]
Daniela Amodei
Yeah.
- [45:50]
Oprah Winfrey
After this last break, Dario and Daniela Amedei share their advice on how to empower ourselves in this age of AI. That's why I think it's a great idea to share this episode with a friend or loved one. Because AI impacts and will continue to impact every one of us. We'll be right back.
- [46:08]
Dario Amodei
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- [46:38]
Oprah Winfrey
We're back on the Oprah podcast talking with the co founders of Anthropic, Dario and Daniela Amadeh, about the rapid evolution of AI and what it means for what should we, the public, be doing? Or are we just, should we just content ourselves with the fact that we're on the train?
- [46:56]
Daniela Amodei
Being afraid of the technology and not using it and being literate will not make many of the challenges that we are concerned about and that Dario outlined go away. And I think knowledge is power. I truly think you don't have to be an expert in technology to have some concept of how to use these artificial intelligence tools. And, and I think what that that gives people is an opinion and some autonomy to be able to say, I like that this technology can do this thing and I don't like that it can do this other thing right. Because people have a voice. They have a voice, by the way, to the companies, they have a voice to their representative government to say, we don't like again, Anthropic, we don't allow kids under 18 on the platform. Other companies have a have a different policy. If you've read Jonathan Haidt's book the Anxious Generation, I think there's a lot of research that suggests you might want to be really careful about giving developing brains.
- [47:53]
Dario Amodei
Read the book.
- [47:53]
Oprah Winfrey
We've talked to him three times.
- [47:55]
Daniela Amodei
Yes, of course. But you know, I read that book and I think that was part of, you know, again, it felt like in some ways an easy decision for us to say we just don't know enough about what AI is going to do to kids. It's not to say that there couldn't be great benefits for kids using AI for learning. But that needs to be done with an adult in the room. It needs to be done with a human in the loop. And you know, I think that that the reason we've always taken this perspective is we just, we people deserve autonomy. To, to Dario's point, people shouldn't feel like artificial intelligence is happening to them. People should feel like, hey, we get a say in what types of bills go up in Congress in your state that help protect people from the negative externalities that AI could cause. I also think at the same time, holding the light side, I think there's a world where jobs will look different, but there will actually be more opportunity for sort of human to human interaction. I think the last generation of technology really disintermediated us from each other. Right. Social media is kind of structured around the idea that you're sort of living this virtual life. You're holding your phone and you're looking at what your friends are doing, but guess what you're not actually doing. You're not spending time with your friends.
- [49:09]
Oprah Winfrey
Yeah.
- [49:09]
Daniela Amodei
You're spending time staring at your phone.
- [49:11]
Oprah Winfrey
Even you're at the concert, you're holding your phone. You're not even in the concert, you're just filming what's up.
- [49:15]
Daniela Amodei
You're not looking at. You're not.
- [49:16]
Dario Amodei
It's a little counterintuitive because social media claims to connect people, but it does it in sort of a fake way.
- [49:22]
Daniela Amodei
Yeah.
- [49:22]
Dario Amodei
AI, you're talking to the AI, you're not talking to a person. But, but, but it doesn't substitute for your interaction with people. It can enable your interaction with people.
- [49:31]
Daniela Amodei
And my feeling is that it's not even necessarily that the jobs themselves will completely go away or change, but the qualities that we look for in people to do a given job will change. Okay, so the example that I point to is if you think about a doctor, when you go to the doctor today, you probably want to go to the smartest, best doctor where you say, look, I have a stomachache. Tell me what's wrong with you.
- [49:56]
Oprah Winfrey
Who's the specialist?
- [49:57]
Daniela Amodei
Who's the specialist? Tell me what's wrong with me. And AIs are going to get really good at being able to do that. Today we prize doctors for being good diagnosticians, but we don't necessarily always prize them for having a good bedside manner.
- [50:10]
Oprah Winfrey
Right.
- [50:10]
Daniela Amodei
In a world where AI is as good at diagnosing you as a doctor, people are still going to want a doctor. They're just going to want them to do different things for them. Right. And AI can't physically examine you. It can't say, hey, you look really down today. How, how have your chemo treatments been going?
- [50:25]
Oprah Winfrey
It can't lay its hands on you.
- [50:26]
Daniela Amodei
It can't lay its hands on you. And there's so much compelling evidence that patients have better clinical outcomes.
- [50:33]
Oprah Winfrey
Absolutely.
- [50:33]
Daniela Amodei
When they have a good personal relationship with their doctor, when they like their
- [50:37]
Oprah Winfrey
doctors, and when their doctors actually Lay their hands on them and touch them and communicate with them.
- [50:41]
Daniela Amodei
Yes. And by the way, have enough time to think through and empathize. And I think that is the good world of job changes.
- [50:49]
Oprah Winfrey
And the doctors say, I don't have time to go around.
- [50:52]
Daniela Amodei
I can't lay my hands on people. I don't have time because I'm thousands of patients. I'm doing the clerical work and I have too big of a patient caseload. But if you have a tool that's able to diagnose things in concert with a doctor, where the doctor says, you know, let me talk to this tool. And by the way, I'm not going to be spending as much time running all the medical tests and doing this and that I'm going to be spending time relating to as a human being. I think that is going to be really. I think that's a better word.
- [51:15]
Oprah Winfrey
I'll say that again. Your positions may not go away, but what you're needed to do in those positions is going to change.
- [51:23]
Daniela Amodei
Yes. And I personally believe there's going to be a shift. Yes.
- [51:26]
Oprah Winfrey
And of course there is, because that's what we're doing. Human beings, we're evolving. Yes, evolving to the next level.
- [51:33]
Daniela Amodei
I would also just say I personally think knowledge is power. And something that worries me is there are demographic differences in who feels comfortable using AI and who does not. Women use AI a tiny fraction of the time compared to men. And I think AI is an opportunity for us to level the playing field in some ways, but it requires people to be engaged. That doesn't mean, hey, you have to come pay us all this money and sign up. Just be comfortable, fluent. Don't be afraid of the technology because the more you know about it and the more you understand it, the better informed you are going to be to use your voice effectively.
- [52:09]
Oprah Winfrey
And it's here, you're in it. And if you're going to continue to live, you're going to be in the world where we're never part of our society.
- [52:16]
Dario Amodei
It's not going away again. More than the train or the steam engine is, you know, airplane.
- [52:22]
Daniela Amodei
I think of it like the Internet, Right. Everybody had somebody's parent who said, I'm not going to be online. It's impossible. Right. Everybody has to be on the Internet now in some form. And I think artificial intelligence is just the next instantiation of that.
- [52:33]
Oprah Winfrey
So one of the things I want to talk about is the fact that AI just keeps. It just keeps improving on itself. That's, I guess, what it's designed to do. And there is a new AI model called Mythos.
- [52:46]
Dario Amodei
Mythos, yes.
- [52:47]
Oprah Winfrey
So that is like smarter than the smartest of the smartest. Tell us in a simple term what Mythos is and what it can and will be doing.
- [52:57]
Dario Amodei
Yeah. So, you know, the general principles of these models is when we train them, we try and, you know, make them better and better at everything, at writing code, at translating languages and answering questions, at reading documents. And Mythos was just kind of the latest, you know, was the latest iteration. Every few months we produce a smarter model, and Mythos was the latest tool, smart model. And, you know, we. We made some discoveries a few months before we started Mythos. And so it was a particularly large jump when we started testing Mythos. When we make these models, we test them for lots of things. We say, oh, how good is this thing at translating, you know, French to English? Or how good is this at, you know, recommending a stock portfolio? Or how good is it at, you know, finding bugs in software code? And it was on that last one that we found something interesting for Mythos, which is that Mythos was much better than human software engineers at finding ways that code could be exploited and broken into. You know, have you ever heard about, like, ransomware attacks on hospitals or schools? So, you know, these cyber attacks happen all the time. And Mythos, we found not because we designed it to do this or because we designed it to be dangerous, turned out to be very good at both conducting cyber attacks and defending against cyber attacks. And so we said, wow, this thing kind of seems like a weapon. We probably shouldn't give it to everyone right away. And so the thing we came up with is we said, we're going to take some companies that are particularly core to the infrastructure of the Internet, right? Some of the top banks, some of the top, you know, software providers, like Apple or like Microsoft or like Google, and, you know, hand it to them and let them fix everything before it becomes widely available and things can be broken. So we would kind of give it to the defenders before the, you know, before the attackers got a hold of it. And so we had a program we've, we've given the model to, you know, I think it's something like 40 companies now and they're, you know, they're busy, they're busily finding bugs. And, you know, we just had a post a few days ago that one of the well known companies found more bugs and fixed more bugs with Mythos in a week than they had for the last year. And so we are, you know, this is really changing things now. Our hope is the defenders can fix everything and everything gets more seamless, Everything gets harder to break into. So our hope is the era of ransomware and, you know, spies breaking into your phone and, you know, people are
- [55:54]
Oprah Winfrey
worried about bioterrorism and should be.
- [55:57]
Daniela Amodei
So
- [55:59]
Dario Amodei
our hope is that at the end of this, say at the end of this year, we get to a point where all of these. Many of these things have been fixed and we live in a more secure world than we did before. But in the meantime, there's this dangerous period during which you have these kind of incredible capabilities that you don't want to just necessarily loose on the world. And so we're trying to. We're trying to manage that by giving it to the defenders before we give it to the attackers.
- [56:31]
Oprah Winfrey
Thank you for that. This is the kind of thing that keeps you up at night. Do you sleep well?
- [56:37]
Dario Amodei
You know, I cannot legitimately say that I sleep. I wish I could, but, you know, I gotta give you an honest answer here, which is, you know, I don't always sleep so well.
- [56:48]
Daniela Amodei
I would say, you know, going back to the earlier part of the conversation we were having, because you're worried about
- [56:52]
Dario Amodei
these things, this, this and, you know, just everything. Just wanting to get it right. That's the thing that worries me the most. Just like, you know, for all our intentions, all of this stuff is incredibly complex. It's just, are we going to screw up?
- [57:06]
Daniela Amodei
Yeah.
- [57:06]
Dario Amodei
And. And I mean, the answer is yes, at some point we'll screw up something, but. But like, are we gonna get the big stuff? Right?
- [57:12]
Oprah Winfrey
Yeah. Yeah. And also because you all are fundamentally principled people.
- [57:17]
Daniela Amodei
Yes.
- [57:18]
Oprah Winfrey
So I think that actually makes a big difference when you're fundamentally principled people. Not everybody is. And there's a lot of egos in every field. But I think, particularly when people are making so many billions and billions and billions of dollars and there's the race to beat China and all of that, that it's easily to lose sight of what really matters and what really matters to the public. I'm wondering what you all have done to sort of keep your egos in check.
- [57:52]
Daniela Amodei
You know, I think again, to us, it always comes back to the mission.
- [57:57]
Oprah Winfrey
Right.
- [57:58]
Daniela Amodei
Why we did this in the first place, why did we leave OpenAI to start anthropic? Because we wanted to make sure that AI goes well for everybody. Right. That's why we're a public benefit corporation. That's why we took the 80% pledge. That's why. That's why we've made all of these difficult decisions.
- [58:15]
Dario Amodei
You know, I was in our internal, like, our internal Slack messaging app today. You know, I talked to the company a lot, and one of the things I was saying is, you know, we're 3500 people now. We were, you know, like 1200 people, you know, like six months ago at one point. Because. Because I encourage this. Someone posted in my, like, you know, like, my personal Slack channel. You know, I had done an all hands in front of the company and like, like, you know, said something, and I think I said it in not quite the right way. And someone. Someone wrote in my channel. Usually it's only me who writes things in my channel. Yeah, someone wrote on my channel, this was a pretty bad thing to say. And it, like, makes everyone feel bad. And like, you know, this, this, like, you shouldn't have said it this way. And of course, you know, when I read it, you know, the initial reaction is always like, oh, man. It's like, I feel like, who is that? Yeah, but, but, but, like, you take a beat and then. And then two minutes later, I'm like, I'm so glad people are saying this. And then, you know, I wrote something that was like, so were you always. I'm so glad you're. What you're, like, willing to say, you know, and. And then people noticed this. Like, many people messaged me where I was like, I didn't know you could do that. I didn't know you could just contradict the CEO of a, you know, 3000
- [59:18]
Daniela Amodei
example is so powerful.
- [59:20]
Oprah Winfrey
That is a powerful example. You got to.
- [59:22]
Dario Amodei
You've got to.
- [59:22]
Oprah Winfrey
You know why? That's a powerful example? Early, early on, like in the late 80s, I think I met Henry Kravis for the first time, and he was saying to me, be aware that the more money you accumulate, the less chance that you're ever gonna hear the truth.
- [59:36]
Daniela Amodei
Yes.
- [59:36]
Oprah Winfrey
Because he said rich men, and I guess he also meant rich women, too. But he goes, rich men rarely hear the truth.
- [59:43]
Daniela Amodei
Yes.
- [59:43]
Oprah Winfrey
Yeah.
- [59:44]
Daniela Amodei
I'll also just add, I think what you do in your personal life matters too. There's what you do at work. But I basically have the same friends I've had since high school and college, and guess what? They have no trouble being honest with me, and they have no trouble telling me the truth, and they have no trouble disagreeing with public decisions that Anthropic has made. Right. So I think the last five years have changed a lot, but I think for me personally, I don't really feel like that much has changed. Outside of work. And I think that's an important grounding characteristic. I think people who tend to be in charge of these big companies, sometimes it's like they become obsessed just with their work. They're not a well rounded person. And I think there's something when we started Anthropic of like the first, you know, of the seven or eight folks who really started the company, only one of them had one kid, and now there's 11 kids. And I think there's something about the fact that we all chose to be parents. We all want fulfilling real lives outside of work. I think that just brings a sort of groundedness, humility, low ego, and just again, like, no one is bigger than the mission.
- [60:45]
Oprah Winfrey
So what comes through really clearly is that sister and brother, you started this. It's bigger than you ever imagined. You always wanted to make an impact in doing good for the world, and you stuck to your principles even when it was really difficult. What gives you the hope that you will get this right?
- [61:08]
Dario Amodei
So we're never quite sure, I think, is the honest answer. Like, we believe we're trying our best and trying very hard. It's just the decisions are complicated. Right. If we go back to Mythos, it's like, do we give it to more people faster or less people slow or like, who do we trust? And so it's about getting all the details right in addition to just having the right principles, which. Which I believe we do.
- [61:33]
Oprah Winfrey
Yeah.
- [61:34]
Dario Amodei
And. And so I think we worry about it every day. And the fact that we worry about it every day is maybe the thing that most gives us the hope that, like, that we're so paranoid about it. But it's, it's, it's no guarantee. And we've made mistakes. We're going to continue to make mistakes. Like, you know, we're. That, that, that's, that's a given.
- [61:51]
Oprah Winfrey
Are there other people in Silicon Valley who also have it a part of their mission to get it right? Do you feel supported in that mission by others?
- [62:01]
Daniela Amodei
It's hard to point to maybe like a particular company, but I think I am very touched by sometimes, you know, whatever you go and talk at an event or another company wants you to come speak to them, and somebody in the audience, you know, comes up to you afterwards or asks a question and they say something like, thank you guys for the way that you do things. Yeah, like, thank you for trying to get it right. There's this kind of sense that, you know, I think, I think something that's great about our relationship is Dario And I, I also think we hold each other accountable. Right. And so when, you know, we go back and forth on is this a right, is this the right decision for the company? Is this in keeping with our values? We have each other, we have. The whole co founding team is still at anthropic. I think we've also hired an amazing set of people who are also there for the mission. There's almost a kind of group accountability. And if you pair that with, like Dario mentioned, this culture internally of anybody can disagree with us, right. And yes, that's hard to do, but there's a lot of forums in which they're encouraged to do that. Their manager can do it, they can do it anonymously. I think all of those qualities make it more likely that if we start to stray from the path, we're at
- [63:07]
Oprah Winfrey
least going to know, okay, and you want to leave us, the public knowing what, what is the most important thing you want us to know in this moment in time where we are in our AI journey?
- [63:21]
Dario Amodei
You know, there's, there's something really big happening to the world here. This isn't the, this isn't the, you know, this isn't the latest technology. This isn't crypto. This isn't mobile. This, you know, this, this isn't like the latest, you know, gadget or buzzword. Something really big is happening to humanity here. While the technology is being built by a small number of people, we, we need to make it work for everyone and we need to make sure that between all of us, we make the right decisions and we reckon with changes to our daily lives, changes to our jobs, changes to, you know, government and civil liberties. And if we do this the right way, all of those things could change in a positive way. All of those things could be better than we left them. We could have the perfect world where, you know, many, many diseases are cured, people's lives are more joyful and meaningful. But, you know, if we get it wrong, it's easy to imagine things not going that way at all. And, you know, it's up to all of us. Some of us are in a more central position. But that's something I think we need to change as well. And, you know, it's not easy. It's not any one thing. It's going to be a bunch of different things.
- [64:42]
Daniela Amodei
I think I would probably leave people very similar to what Dario said with this concept of light and shade, that the potential benefits from artificial intelligence are vast. We've written about them, we've tried to talk about them publicly. We believe they're real. And also the risks are also real. Right. We're not trying to hype up the positives or hype up the negatives. I think they're both true. It's complex, but we have to hold two things at once. And I think, just echoing Dario this is not something that technology companies can do by ourselves, nor should it be. It's something that's going to take partnership from a much bigger group of people than is currently working on artificial intelligence. And I think the first step there has to be don't be afraid of it, learn about it, lean into it, ask questions, be critical. Just like we say to our staff, right? We are only going to have a chance of getting this right if we expand the circle of people that are in the conversation.
- [65:46]
Oprah Winfrey
I ask this of all my guests and particularly I'm interested from the two of you and what do you think is the meaning of a well lived life and how AI is going to contribute to that well lived life? But what will be the meaning of a well lived life for you, your family and your children?
- [66:06]
Daniela Amodei
I think for me, a well lived life is one where you have agency and autonomy. You're in the driver's seat and you're using that in the service of being the best version of yourself. And I think the best version of yourself for you, for your family, for your kids, for your broader community and I think for the world. I think the ability to be self reflective, to learn from mistakes, to overcome struggles and to come out the other side thinking, you know, I know more about who I am, I like who I am and I want to help other people. I think that to me is the best definition of a well lived introspective life. And like I talked about, I think there's a world where AI could damage so many of the things that I think are the hallmarks of a well lived life. And I think there's a world where it could enable those and it could allow a lot more people to be able to have meaning and value and to self introspect, to be the best versions of ourselves, to show up for each other. Well, and I hope that's the world that we're going to build towards.
- [67:29]
Dario Amodei
I'd just say the same thing as Daniela in different words. I think it's pretty simple, you know, I think, you know, just operate always with a sense of dignity and principle. Like, you know, when you look back and you're like, you know, you shouldn't when you look back, be ashamed of what you did. Or say, you know, I. You know, I wish I'd done this. This other thing. Of course you'll make mistakes, but, you know, you were. You were putting every iota of effort you could into. Into, you know, into trying to get it right. You know, I think we have duties both to individuals, you know, to. To. To. To my. To my co founders, to all the other people in my life, but also to the users of our technology, to everyone else in the country and world as citizens. So I think we have duties to all those people that we have to attend to and making sure that at the end of it, it was directed at some purpose, some consistent view of what we were trying to accomplish in the world, the vision we were trying to make happen. Maybe it doesn't happen. Maybe we screwed up. Maybe we make terrible mistakes. But, you know, just having the vision be clear and trying to pursue it with integrity, if you can do that, of course you want the outcome too. But I think if doing that is all you can control, right? And more important, ultimately, than the outcome.
- [68:53]
Oprah Winfrey
Thank you for growing us forward. That's what you're doing. You're doing exactly what you envisioned as little kids.
- [69:00]
Dario Amodei
It is very strange, but we are.
- [69:01]
Daniela Amodei
Yes, it is.
- [69:03]
Oprah Winfrey
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Dario and Daniela. You've given us a lot to think about. Go well, everybody. Go well. You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.