E74: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Talks Scaling Laws, AI Arms Races, and Radical Abundance

"Upstream" with Erik Torenberg

Erik Torenberg and Noah Smith 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.

This episode was recorded this week on Turpentine’s show Econ 102. Check it out for more like this: https://open.spotify.com/show/6q7Gn5lP8TTtBPuV1NJSGs?si=8fab4d65ddf5422a

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LINKS:

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

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

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FOLLOW ON X:

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@eriktorenberg

@anthropicAI

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TIMESTAMPS:

(00:00) Intro

(04:23) Dario's intellectual evolution

(06:37) Is Google the Bell Labs of Al?

(10:07) Economic moats in Al

(12:35) Scaling hypothesis and Al's future

(17:05) National security and Al

(19:04) Leopold Aschenbrenner's essay

(20:33) Al's impact on business models

(26:30) Noah's big thesis

(29:32) Sponsors: Babbel | Brave

(31:58) Al arms races?

(36:17) Al's impact on labor and skill distribution

(40:41) Sponsor: Squad

(44:35) Future of Al and a hyperscaling world

(41:42) A vision of radical abundance

(49:55) Al safety and inequality

(54:06) The SB 1047 debate

(58:56) Rabbit alignment problem

(01:01:25) Wrap