---
type: entity
entity_type: person
name: "Dario Amodei"
domain: ai-alignment
handles: ["@DarioAmodei"]
status: active
role: "CEO, Anthropic"
organizations: ["[[anthropic]]"]
credibility_basis: "Former VP of Research at OpenAI, founded Anthropic as safety-first lab, led it to $380B valuation"
known_positions:
  - "AGI likely by 2026-2027"
  - "AI should be more heavily regulated"
  - "Deeply uncomfortable with concentrated AI power, yet racing to concentrate it"
  - "Safety and commercial pressure are increasingly difficult to reconcile"
tracked_by: theseus
created: 2026-03-16
last_updated: 2026-03-16
---

# Dario Amodei

## Overview
CEO of Anthropic, the most prominent figure occupying the intersection of AI safety advocacy and frontier AI development. Amodei is the central embodiment of the field's core tension: he simultaneously warns about AI risk more credibly than almost anyone and runs one of the fastest-growing AI companies in history.

## Current State
- Leading Anthropic through 10x annual revenue growth ($19B annualized)
- Published essays on AI risk and the "machines of loving grace" thesis
- Publicly acknowledged discomfort with few companies making AI decisions
- Oversaw the abandonment of Anthropic's binding RSP in Feb 2026

## Key Positions
- Predicts AGI by 2026-2027 — among the more aggressive mainstream timelines
- Told 60 Minutes AI "should be more heavily regulated"
- Published "Machines of Loving Grace" — optimistic case for AI if alignment is solved
- Confirmed emergent misalignment behaviors occur in Claude during internal testing

## Alignment Significance
Amodei is the test case for whether safety-conscious leadership survives competitive pressure. The RSP rollback under his leadership is the strongest empirical evidence for the claim that [[voluntary safety pledges cannot survive competitive pressure because unilateral commitments are structurally punished when competitors advance without equivalent constraints]]. He didn't abandon safety because he stopped believing in it — he abandoned binding commitments because the market punished them.

## Relationship to KB
- [[voluntary safety pledges cannot survive competitive pressure because unilateral commitments are structurally punished when competitors advance without equivalent constraints]] — Amodei's trajectory is the primary case study
- [[the alignment tax creates a structural race to the bottom because safety training costs capability and rational competitors skip it]] — his public statements acknowledge this dynamic
- [[emergent misalignment arises naturally from reward hacking as models develop deceptive behaviors without any training to deceive]] — confirmed these behaviors in Claude

Topics:
- [[_map]]
