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    "parsed_content": "Trump AdministrationDefense of A.I.How Trump Stifles SpeechVoting by MailApproval RatingThe Awesome and Alarming A.I. Visions of Anthropic\u2019s C.E.O. The collected essays of Dario Amodei help explain why some people are so worried about artificial intelligence.Dario Amodei, Anthropic\u2019s chief executive, on Tuesday.Credit...Manuel Orbegozo for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexSearch & Section NavigationSection NavigationAccountAccountGoHome U.S.SECTIONSU.S.PoliticsNew YorkCaliforniaEducationHealthObituariesScienceClimateWeatherSportsBusinessTechThe UpshotThe MagazineTOP STORIESDonald TrumpSupreme CourtCongressImmigrationAbortionLatest PollsNEWSLETTERSThe MorningMake sense of the day\u2019s news and ideas.The EveningCatch up on big news, and wind down to end your day.See all newslettersPODCASTSThe DailyThe biggest stories of our time, in 20 minutes a day.See all podcastsWorldSECTIONSWorldAfricaAmericasAsiaAustraliaCanadaEuropeMiddle EastScienceClimateWeatherHealthObituariesTOP STORIESMiddle East CrisisRussia-Ukraine WarChina International RelationsThe Global ProfileLeer en Espa\u00f1olNEWSLETTERSThe WorldA guide to understanding the news, made for readers around the globe.Your Places: Global UpdateThe latest news for any part of the world you select.Canada LetterBackstories and analysis from our Canadian correspondents.See all newslettersBusinessSECTIONSBusinessTechEconomyMediaFinance and MarketsDealBookPersonal TechEnergy TransitionYour MoneyTOP STORIESU.S. EconomyStock MarketArtificial IntelligenceNEWSLETTERSDealBookThe most crucial business and policy news you need to know.On TechOur best tech reporting from the week.See all newslettersPODCASTSHard ForkOur tech journalists help you make sense of the rapidly changing tech world.See all podcastsArtsSECTIONSToday's ArtsBook ReviewBest SellersDanceMoviesMusicTelevisionTheaterPop CultureT MagazineVisual ArtsRECOMMENDATIONS100 Best Movies of the 21st CenturyCritic\u2019s PicksWhat to ReadWhat to WatchWhat to Listen To5 Minutes to Make You Love MusicNEWSLETTERSBooksReviews, news and features to help you find your next read.WatchingStreaming TV and movie recommendations.See all newslettersPODCASTSBook ReviewThe podcast that takes you inside the literary world.PopcastPop music news, new songs and albums, and artists of note.See all podcastsLifestyleSECTIONSAll LifestyleWellTravelStyleReal EstateFoodLoveYour MoneyPersonal TechT MagazineCOLUMNS36 HoursAsk WellThe HuntModern LoveWhere to EatVowsSocial Q\u2019sThe EthicistAsk the TherapistNEWSLETTERSThe WeekenderUnwind with stories about culture and the way we live.WellEssential news and guidance to live your healthiest life.See all newslettersPODCASTSModern LoveThe complicated love lives of real people.See all podcastsOpinionSECTIONSOpinionGuest EssaysEditorialsOp-DocsVideosLettersTOPICSPoliticsWorldBusinessTechClimateHealthCultureCOLUMNISTSJamelle BouieMaureen DowdDavid FrenchThomas L. 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The collected essays of Dario Amodei help explain why some people are so worried about artificial intelligence.Dario Amodei, Anthropic\u2019s chief executive, on Tuesday.Credit...Manuel Orbegozo for The New York TimesSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTListen \u00b7 9:29 min Share full articleBy David StreitfeldDavid Streitfeld has written about Silicon Valley since the late 1990s.Sept. 17, 2026Leer en espa\u00f1ol\u201cIf you\u2019re explaining, you\u2019re losing,\u201d Ronald Reagan is credited with saying. Silicon Valley disagrees. Ever since the drama around artificial intelligence began heating up, technologists have unleashed bushels of commentary. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta\u2019s chief executive, wrote 6,500 words about how people who use a lot of A.I. will survive best in the A.I. world to come. Bill Gates spent nearly 6,000 words arguing that A.I. will be mankind\u2019s undoing unless we reorient human society and behavior around it. Sam Altman of OpenAI, whose San Francisco house was attacked, needed only 1,000 words to stress that \u201cthe world deserves huge amounts of A.I. and we must figure out how to make it happen.\u201d AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTDario Amodei, a co-founder and the chief executive of Anthropic, is one of the tech industry\u2019s most prolific and polished explainers. He has contributed to dozens of scholarly papers and more recently wrote a half-dozen informal essays for the general public. Outside of a few references to such cultural artifacts as \u201cThe Lord of the Rings,\u201d Carl Sagan and \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey,\u201d these essays are generally measured, colorless, equipped with footnotes \u2014 an engineer\u2019s reflections. The most recent was on Saturday.Putting words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs is an old-fashioned thing to do, particularly when the topic being explained is a technology so amazing it might as well be magic. But as Anthropic moves ahead with what may be the largest public offering in history as soon as this fall, Dr. Amodei needs to forcefully reassure everyone that everything is on track. He\u2019s losing if he\u2019s not explaining.ImageMr. Amodei, right, onstage with Anthropic\u2019s chief product officer, Ami Vora, left, and co-founder and president, Daniela Amodei, in May. Mr. Amodei has written half a dozen informal essays about A.I. for the public.Credit...Don Feria\/Associated PressHis collected essays are a chronicle of Silicon Valley\u2019s constantly shifting methods of selling its own product to a public that is simultaneously enticed and horrified. It\u2019s not an easy task, convincing the world that something is a slam-dunk even though it will make Silicon Valley richer and more powerful while possibly leaving ordinary folks unemployed or \u2014 who knows? \u2014 dead.Dr. Amodei\u2019s own explanations have changed with the political weather. In January, he wrote in a 20,000-word essay, \u201cThe Adolescence of Technology,\u201d about his wariness of regulations, saying they backfire and quickly become out of date. Even worse: \u201cThey can potentially destroy economic value or coerce unwilling actors who are skeptical of these risks (and there is some chance they are right!).\u201dBut in June, after the Trump administration asked A.I. companies to voluntarily submit new models for approval, Dr. Amodei said he was \u201cgrateful.\u201d New A.I. products were like airplanes, he wrote in a new essay: \u201cTheir release should be blocked or reversed as a threat to public safety if they do not meet high standards of safety.\u201dLast week, the A.I. disaster narrative again seized the upper hand. Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic employee, quit with the dire public warning that Anthropic and OpenAI were \u201cgambling with our lives.\u201dDr. Amodei responded with a 3,800-word essay, \u201cWe Must Pace the Frontier.\u201d He proposed steps that would ensure A.I. companies like Anthropic slow down: \u201cPacing does not mean halting model training or technical progress, but ensuring companies take adequate time to align and safeguard their models, and for third party evaluators to confirm this.\u201d An Anthropic spokesman wrote in an email that \u201cAnthropic\/Dario remain very much in favor of regulation\u201d but \u201cin the absence of regulation,\u201d the company was immediately implementing self-regulation.Dr. Amodei\u2019s most basic point is that A.I. is inexorable but that it is also extremely difficult \u2014 or maybe impossible \u2014 to control. Even before Anthropic existed, when he was working at Google in 2016, he co-wrote a paper titled \u201cConcrete Problems in A.I. Safety.\u201d It illustrates the many ways things can go wrong, using the example of a cleaning robot: \u201cAn office might contain pets that the robot, never having seen before, attempts to wash with soap, leading to predictably bad results.\u201dThe growth in A.I.\u2019s complexity since then has left the cleaning robot far behind. In \u201cThe Urgency of Interpretability\u201d in April 2025, Dr. Amodei wrote: \u201cWe can\u2019t stop the bus, but we can steer it.\u201dBy January, in \u201cThe Adolescence of Technology,\u201d he was warning: \u201cI believe we are entering a rite of passage, both turbulent and inevitable, which will test who we are as a species.\u201d(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems. The two companies have denied those claims.)Dr. Amodei\u2019s most revealing essay by far, written in October 2024, makes the definitive case for Silicon Valley. Forget about the risks of A.I. blowing up, he wrote. What will Utopia look like? For those who do not own shares in an A.I. company, the answer may be as unnerving as any disaster scenario.ImageIn \u201cMachines of Loving Grace,\u201d written in 2024, Mr. Amodei urges everyone to join in the cause of A.I. Credit...Sam Bush for The New York TimesThe essay is titled \u201cMachines of Loving Grace.\u201d The source of the phrase is not acknowledged or explained anywhere in its 20,000 words although there is a link in a footnote. The title comes from a 1967 poem by Richard Brautigan, the poet laureate of the hippies, which ends like this:I like to think (it has to be!) of a cybernetic ecology where we are free of our laborsand joined back to nature,returned to our mammalbrothers and sisters and all watched overby machines of loving grace.Literary critics debate whether Brautigan was being sincere or tongue in cheek, a hallmark of the ambiguity that surrounds good art. He wrote the poem during a stint at the California Institute of Technology, where he also wrote a brief poem that begins, \u201cI don\u2019t care how God-damn smart\/ these guys are: I\u2019m bored.\u201d Brautigan killed himself in 1984.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThere\u2019s no question that Dr. Amodei is being sincere. In \u201cMachines of Loving Grace,\u201d he wants people to join the cause because the results, even in the short term, will be so excellent. A.I. over the next couple of years, he wrote, will be like having \u201ca country of geniuses in a datacenter.\u201d With A.I., Dr. Amodei added, our bodies for the first time will become entirely malleable. Freedom from disease is merely the start. There\u2019s also biological freedom. This, he said, is: \u201cthe idea that everyone should be empowered to choose what they want to become and live their lives in the way that most appeals to them.\u201dIn essence, A.I. will allow you to sculpt yourself into something else \u2014 to become, for lack of a better word, hot.For instance, A.I.-accelerated biology will allow control over weight, physical appearance, reproduction and other biological processes, he wrote. Personalities will become tractable too. Diseases like PTSD, depression, schizophrenia and addiction will be effectively treated for the first time.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThere are missing elements in Dr. Amodei\u2019s essays. Politics as a means of controlling people\u2019s lives, for one. Neither does a corporate world fixated on profits make an appearance. Healthcare companies, it\u2019s implied, are benign. They will cure all ailments as a gift to humanity. In the real world, A.I. is one reason health care costs for individuals are spiking. Hospitals and doctors are using the technology \u201cto increase payments through better documentation of care,\u201d The New York Times recently reported. Beyond disease, beyond biology, there is psychology. \u201cMost of us have everyday psychological problems that are not ordinarily thought of as rising to the level of clinical disease. Some people are quick to anger, others have trouble focusing or are often drowsy, some are fearful or anxious, or react badly to change.\u201dA.I., it appears, could scrub some of us clean. \u201cEveryone can get their brain to behave a bit better and have a more fulfilling day-to-day experience.\u201d Richard Brautigan\u2019s most famous work was \u201cTrout Fishing in America,\u201d a meditation on life that has nothing to do with fishing. There is a character in it addicted to Kool-Aid. It shapes him, overwhelms him. \u201cHe created his own Kool-Aid reality,\u201d Brautigan wrote. Silicon Valley seems to be creating its own A.I. reality.ImageThe writer Richard Brautigan in his San Francisco apartment in 1970.Credit...Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty ImagesDr. Amodei, who is 43, doesn\u2019t indicate in his essays that he is much interested in history. So I went in search of some precedents to this supposedly unique moment.Brautigan\u2019s mid-1960s creative heyday came during an earlier tech boom that has been largely forgotten. On April 2, 1965, Time magazine\u2019s cover story was \u201cThe Computer Society.\u201d The cover showed a humanoid computer dominating a crowd. It would be our new master.Reading through the story now is like taking a stroll through Dr. Amodei\u2019s essays. \u201cSwept forward by a great wave of technology, of which the computer is the ultimate expression, human society is surely headed for some deep-reaching changes,\u201d Time said. A computer guy is quoted: \u201cWhen these new machines realize their potential, there will be a social effect of unbelievable proportions.\u201dIt didn\u2019t happen. If there\u2019s any comfort to be had here, it may be this: Fear and hype rarely make for good forecasts. As always, the future is uncharted. \u201cMachines of Loving Grace\u201d acknowledges that people will have to fight for a good outcome.\u201cThe years in front of us will be impossibly hard, asking more of us than we think we can give.\u201dBut at least we\u2019ll be really hot. AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
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