Afraid of GPT-3 Becoming AGI, Fearful of Being Kidnapped in China, Anthropic's Dario May Be Silicon Valley's Strangest CEO

According to Dynamic Beating monitoring, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's biggest paradox is that he has always believed AI could destroy the world, yet he founded one of the most radical cutting-edge AI companies.

As far back as his time at OpenAI, he was already extreme. Sensitive memos were not kept on Google Docs but instead written on an offline computer at home and printed out for colleagues. Some say he even refused to go to China out of kidnapping concerns.

Before GPT-3 even began training, he was worried it might already be approaching AGI. Due to this, Dario's security team delayed Microsoft's $1 billion investment in OpenAI for several months. A former OpenAI executive described this group as resembling a "priesthood" at the time.

He also had a long-standing feud with Sam Altman. The two clashed frequently at OpenAI, with one instance of Dario running into the office library to watch YouTube to cool off. Later on, Anthropic employees joked privately that he had "Sama Derangement Syndrome."

This temperament persisted into Anthropic. The company holds a biweekly all-hands meeting jokingly referred to by employees as "Dario Vision Quest," where he gives lengthy talks on AI, politics, war, and the future of humanity. The company even has a group of economists studying the implications of the "singularity" on GDP and unemployment rates.

An employee said Dario "always has the singularity in his mind." One major investor remarked, "He is more of a religious leader than a CEO."