Anthropic's CEO gives 'a 25% chance things go really, really badly' with AI
Date:
Sat, 20 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000
Description:
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says theres a 1-in-4 chance AI ends badly for humanity.
FULL STORY ======================================================================Anthropi c CEO Dario Amodei estimates a 25% chance AI leads to catastrophe He still believes AI is worth investing in and that the benefits outweigh the risks
His comments fit with growing public and policy conversations about AI risks and regulation
One-in-four odds might seem pretty good in some circumstances. It's way
better odds than most casino games, for instance. However, it's apparently unlikely enough for Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to seem unconcerned after pegging the chance that artificial intelligence leads to a society-ending disaster at 25%.
I think there's a 25% chance that things go really, really badly," Amodei blithely said at the Axios AI + DC Summit when asked about his (p)doom probability of doom belief around AI. But he's more focused on the 75%
chance that things go really, really well.
By really, really badly, he doesnt mean your phone autocorrecting duck to something worse. He means scenarios large enough to threaten societal
systems, existential risks, badly misused AI, and runaway outcomes that could be catastrophic. .@JimVandeHei asks @Anthropic CEO @DarioAmodei what probability he would give that AI ends in disaster: "I think there's a 25% chance that things go really, really badly." #AxiosAISummit pic.twitter.com/9d7EQldYNc September 17, 2025
For an industry often drenched in utopian promise or reduced to sci-fi fearmongering, Amodeis attitude about both the odds of an apocalypse and why he still is pushing forward with the technology did stand out.
Amodei isnt alone in expressing unease, but hes in a rarified position. As
CEO of the company behind Claude, hes not a passive observer. Hes shaping the trajectory of this technology in real time. His team is building the very systems whose potential and peril hes weighing.
If someone told you there was a 1-in-4 chance your car would explode every time you turned the key, you might start walking more. Amodei would
apparently become a mechanic and check the car out first before getting in.
AI doom
This also isnt the only warning issued by Amodei about AI. He's warned before that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and sounded the alarm against U.S. exports of high-end chips to China. Thats what makes Amodeis framing so useful. It acknowledges the risk, quantifies the uncertainty, but leaves room for agency.
On the flip side, Amodeis 75% chance things go really well isnt optimism for its own sake. It implies the belief that AI could produce enormous benefits for everyone. It could lead to improved medicine, more efficient manufacturing, and perhaps even strategies to address existential crises like climate change (though one key element to solving this might be the energy required for AI models to run).
But the 25% risk demands that those benefits be built carefully, with consideration for safety measures and regulation. Because if the future is
75% brilliant and 25% broken, the question is: What are we going to do to
keep the weight on the right side? You might also like Anthropic will nuke your attempt to use AI to build a nuke Meta's AI chief is right to call AI fearmongering 'BS' but not for the reason he thinks Calling AI chatbots 'Clankers' is clunky and clueless
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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/claude/anthropics-ceo-gives- a-25-percent-chance-things-go-really-really-badly-with-ai
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