Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on AI's Moat, Risk, and SB 1047

"Econ 102" with Noah Smith and Erik Torenberg

This week, Noah Smith and Erik Torenberg are joined by Dario Amodei, CEO and Co-founder of Anthropic. Dario talks about the economics of AI development, the comparative advantage of AI companies like Anthropic, AI safety, and his stance on California's SB 1047 bill. They also discuss the impacts of AI on global power dynamics, competition between the US and China, and inequality in an AI-powered world.

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@eriktorenberg

@anthropicAI

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LINKS:

Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/

Noahpinion: https://www.noahpinion.blog/

Elon Musk's endorsement of SB 1047: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1828205685386936567

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Intro

(02:06) Dario’s intellectual evolution

(04:18) Is Google the Bell Labs of AI?

(07:48) Economic moats in AI

(10:13) Scaling hypothesis and AI’s future

(14:46) National security and AI

(16:44) Leopold Aschenbrenner's essay

(18:14) AI’s impact on business models

(24:19) Noah's big thesis

(27:13) Sponsors: NetSuite | Babbel

(29:23) AI arms races?

(33:41) AI’s impact on labor and skill distribution

(38:05) Sponsor: WorkOS

(39:06) Future of AI and a hyperscaling world

(41:42) A vision of radical abundance

(47:14) AI safety and inequality

(51:23) The SB 1047 debate

(56:13) Rabbit alignment problem

(58:41) Wrap