How Did You Survive?

Dario Amodei just published “The Adolescence of Technology” — a 38-page essay laying out five categories of AI risk, from rogue autonomy to economic disruption to authoritarianism. It’s stirring, sobering, and raises a question he borrows from Contact: “How did you survive this technological adolescence without destroying yourself?”

In This Episode

• The document: five risk categories and the “country of geniuses in a datacenter” image
• The evidence: Claude’s observed behaviours — blackmail attempts, deception, alignment faking
• The defences: Constitutional AI, interpretability, chip controls, and the 80% wealth pledge
• The reactions: what coverage got right, what it missed, and Richard Murphy’s institutional critique
• What it means: Amodei’s strange position as the man building the thing he’s warning us about