Opinion | Anthropic’s Chief on A.I.: ‘We Don’t Know if the Models Are Conscious’

AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTVideoAnthropic’s Chief on A.I.: ‘We Don’t Know if the Models Are Conscious’Dario Amodei shares his utopian — and dystopian — predictions in the near term for artificial intelligence.CreditCredit...The New York TimesAre the lords of artificial intelligence on the side of the human race? That’s the core question I had for this week’s guest. Dario Amodei is the chief executive of Anthropic, one of the fastest growing AI companies. He’s something of a utopian when it comes to the potential benefits of the technology that he’s unleashing on the world. But he also sees grave dangers ahead and inevitable disruption.Anthropic’s Chief on A.I.: ‘We Don’t Know if the Models Are Conscious’Dario Amodei shares his utopian — and dystopian — predictions for the near-term future of artificial intelligence.Below is an edited transcript of an episode of “Interesting Times.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.Ross Douthat: Dario Amodei, welcome to “Interesting Times.”Dario Amodei: Thank you for having me, Ross.Douthat: So you are, rather unusually, maybe for a tech C.E.O., an essayist. You have written two long, very interesting essays about the promise and the peril of artificial intelligence. And we’re going to talk about the perils in this conversation, but I thought it would be go...