Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei rejected the idea that his own warnings about AI risk are fueling public backlash against the technology, arguing instead that the real problem is a broader crisis of trust, TechCrunch reported.
Amodei was responding to investor Gavin Baker, who had argued that Amodei's repeated safety warnings were feeding anti-AI sentiment and local opposition to data centers, according to TechCrunch. "I think it is fundamentally a crisis of trust," Amodei wrote. "I think that ordinary people don't trust companies, governments, or the tech industry," according to the full remarks Simon Willison published on his site.
Amodei said the distrust predates AI by decades and traced part of it to unfulfilled promises: companies haven't delivered benefits like curing cancer, making earlier claims feel like clichés rather than inspiration, TechCrunch reported. He said he wrote his 2024 essay "Machines of Loving Grace" because he felt the industry wasn't painting an inspiring enough picture of AI's upside.
On regulation, Amodei argued that careful rules could address AI risk, constrain corporate power and still permit open source models, rejecting Baker's framing of a choice between safety and openness, according to TechCrunch.
The exchange lands the same week OpenAI cut the team responsible for assessing catastrophic model risk. For builders, it's worth watching whether "crisis of trust" becomes the industry's standard answer to safety cuts, rather than a reason to reverse them.