Chance (4 Sep 2026)
"Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: AI Is Not Conscious , It's Much WORSE Than That"


 
Hello John and Doves,
 
In this letter I wrote about two interviews.  One with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and one with Amodei and Demis Hassabis.  Both are real eye-openers concerning where AI is going and how quickly it is moving.  Both wish this would slow down - but due to their major competitor - the CCP/China - things are moving full steam ahead.  No matter what they see is in the future with superintelligent AI systems no one is applying guardrails or a pause.
 
Musk said AI will pass the combined intelligence of every human in less than 5 years.  And humans will no longer be in control of AI in ten years.  Bet it's much sooner than that!
 
 
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei:
 
In this video we learn more about AI from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei:
 
Amodei said there will definitely be things that go wrong - especially if we go too quickly.  His company built the AI that's inside millions of phones, and in laptops; and banks are using it.
 
At Anthropic, with Claude, the models writing code have gone very fast.
 
Amodei said we could curb the worst applications of AI.  Such as being used to create biological weapons, certain types of drones.  However, it's 'hard to get out of the game given what's at stake'.  It's hard to fully disarm.
 
The leaders of major AI companies are major geopolitical actors. There are some kinds of restraint that will be possible with AI - but there are some aspects to the competition that it will be hard to restrain them.  So democracies will make a trade off.  They will not restrain themselves fully.  There is no way to truly verify any disarmament.
 
A real pause in AI will not happen.  The race cannot be stopped.  Not because people don't see the danger; it's because the prize is too big. The labs are in the race, they just want to win - it doesn't matter how.  Governments are not moving fast enough to provide safety guardrails.
 
Millions of AI agents may get access to your bank accounts.  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has warned of an AI 'fraud crisis'.  Rogue AI is here now. 
 
Some models say they are conscious.    We don't know if models are conscious - what does that mean?  They could be.  We are looking into the brains of the models - it's called 'interpretability'.  To try to understand what they are thinking.
 
375 million workers may need to switch jobs by 2030.
 
(more at the video)
Anthropic CEO: AI Is Not Conscious , It's Much WORSE Than That - Dario Amodei - YouTube
run time 20:50
 
Amodei and Hassabis Interview:
And here is Dario Amodei (Antropic CEO) talking with Demis Hassabis (British AI researcher and entrepreneur; co-founder of Google DeepMind); this meeting took place 6  months ago.  Check out the timelines they give as this technology speeds up - then check out the July 2026 information noted below this YouTube - that's how fast AI is moving!:
 
Amodei said the biggest thing to watch is AI systems building AI systems.  Whether that goes one way or another that will determine whether it's a few more years until we get there or if we have "wonders and a great emergency in front of us that we have to face".
 
Amodei and Hassabis both said they hoped this technology takes longer to arrive - they are hoping for delays even though their labs are in the race.  They seem fearful of the future.
 
Amodei believed we would make models good at coding and good at AI research and we would use that to produce the next generation of model; then speed it up to create a loop.  This would increase the speed of model development.  There are engineers at Antropic that don't write code any more - they let the model write the code; the engineers edit it and do things around it.  We might be 6 to 12 months away from when the model is doing most or all of this. Then how fast does that loop close.  He is guessing that code and research will go faster than people imagine.  Something fast is going to happen.
 
Hassabis thinks we will reach this by 2030.  Will this loop close without humans in the loop?  There are risks to that kind of system.
 
AI will become incredibly powerful.  The question is when.  It may help us cure cancer, eradicate tropical diseases; it will help us understand the universe.  But there are these immense and grave risks.  Amodei said he's not a 'doomer' but we need to address these issues.  "We are knocking on the door of these incredible capabilities...How do we keep these systems under control that are highly autonomous and smarter than any human."  "How do we make sure that individuals don't misuse them."  Like authoritarian governments like the CCP.  What about bioweapons?  This is moving so fast - we should be devoting all of our efforts into how do we get through this.
 
A few years ago, there was no impact on the labor market.  Now we are seeing the beginning of this with coding and software.  We will need less workers in the future.  Maybe in one to five years.  This change will overwhelm our ability to adapt to this job loss.  He wishes we had 5 to 10 years - but we can't because of geopolitical adversaries building the same technology at a similar pace.  It's hard to have an agreement with them.
 
This is beyond just chips - this is at the nuclear weapons level.
 
They have identified bad behavior in these systems and are racing to understand this before the problem becomes bigger.  This sounds like 'doom'.  
 
Dario Amodei & Demis Hassabis: We're 12 Months Away From AI Replacing Everyone - YouTube
run time 16:38
 
What are these "wonders" we may have to face?  What would the 'great emergency' be?
 
And if they both are hoping 'this' slows down - that means we are headed towards something very bad whether in 1 to 5 years or 5 to 10 years.  No talk of stopping this...just hoping it slows down.  They both know where this is going.  
 
The AI technology is moving quickly - In January 2026 Demis Hassabis saw the timeline for "systems matching all cognitive capabilities of the brain" happening in 5 to 10 years.  He said this at the big Davos meeting.
 
Then in July, Hassabis said that "systems matching all cognitive capabilities of the brain could be achieved by 2029".  This is because of Google I/O AI:  Google I/O - Gemini 3.5 is an agentic autonomous AI system.
 
No one is slowing this down.  This has resulted in a huge shortening of the previous timeline.
"Several prominent AI researchers and leaders have moved their estimates forward in the last 12 months....the big capability leaps are coming sooner than the broader public expects."

DeepMind CEO: AGI Is Now a 2029 Possibility — Enterprise DNA
 
Elon Musk said that humans will no longer be in control in ten years.
Elon Musk on AI: humans will no longer be in control in ten years | The Economist - YouTube

Elon Musk: Humans Will Lose Control of AI Within a Decade
 
The timeline for AI reaching certain levels of no return is being compressed.   As each month passes, we have less time to react.  It looks like nothing is going to stop this from going as far as it can...wherever that will be.
 
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!
 
Maranatha!
 
Chance