Dario Amodei

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Dario Amodei
Dario Amodei at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 01.jpg
Amodei in 2023
Born1983 (age 41–42)
San Francisco, California, U.S.
Education
Known forCo-founder and CEO of Anthropic
Relatives Daniela Amodei (sister)
Awards Time 100 (2025)
Scientific career
Fields Artificial intelligence
Institutions
Thesis Network-Scale Electrophysiology: Measuring and Understanding the Collective Behavior
of Neural Circuits  (2011)
Doctoral advisor Michael J. Berry
William Bialek
Website darioamodei.com

Dario Amodei (born 1983) is an American artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, the company behind the frontier large language model series Claude. He was previously the vice president of research at OpenAI. [1] [2]

Contents

In his capacity as Anthropic CEO, he often writes of the benefits and risks of advanced AI systems. He is a proponent of an "entente" strategy in which a coalition of democratic nations use advanced AI systems in military applications to achieve a decisive advantage over adversaries, while sharing the benefits with cooperating nations. [3] [4] [5]

Early life

Dario Amodei was born in San Francisco, California in 1983. His sister, Daniela Amodei was born four years later. His father was Riccardo Amodei, an Italian American leather craftsman. His mother Elena Engel is Jewish American and was born in Chicago and worked as a project manager for libraries. [6]

Education

Dario grew up in San Francisco and graduated from Lowell High School. [7] Amodei began his undergraduate studies at Caltech, where he worked with Tom Tombrello as one of Tombrello's Physics 11 students. He later transferred to Stanford University, where he earned his undergraduate degree in physics. [8] He also holds a PhD in physics from Princeton University, where he studied electrophysiology of neural circuits. [9] He was a postdoctoral scholar at the Stanford University School of Medicine. [10]

Career

From November 2014 until October 2015 he worked at Baidu. After that, he worked at Google. [11] In 2016, Amodei joined OpenAI. [12]

In 2021, Amodei and his sister Daniela Amodei founded Anthropic along with other former senior members of OpenAI. The Amodei siblings were among those who left OpenAI due to directional differences. [13]

In November 2023, the board of directors of OpenAI approached Amodei about replacing Sam Altman and potentially merging the two startups. Amodei declined both offers. [14]

In 2025, Time magazine listed Amodei as one of the world's 100 most influential people. [15]

Views

In July 2023, Amodei warned a United States Senate judiciary panel of the dangers of AI, including the risks it poses in the development and control of weaponry. [16]

In October 2024, Amodei published an essay titled "Machines of Loving Grace", speculating about how AI could improve human welfare. [4] In it, he writes, "I think that most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be, just as I think most people are underestimating how bad the risks could be." [3] In that same article, he argues for an "entente" strategy where a coalition of democracies use AI to achieve a decisive strategic and military advantage over their adversaries, while distributing the benefits to nations who cooperate. [3]

In an interview with the Financial Times, he elaborated on his position regarding the use of AI in military and intelligence applications, saying "Our view as always is we’re not dogmatically against or for something. The position that we should never use AI in defence and intelligence settings doesn’t make sense to me. The position that we should go gangbusters and use it to make anything we want — up to and including doomsday weapons — that’s obviously just as crazy. We’re trying to seek the middle ground, to do things responsibly." [5] In July 2025, Anthropic accepted a $200M defense contract from the United States Department of Defense, along with Google, XAI, and OpenAI. [17]

In July 2025, a leaked memo written by Amodei to Anthropic staff stated that the company was seeking investments from the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In the memo, he acknowledged that this partnership would likely enrich "dictators", stating "Unfortunately, I think ‘No bad person should ever benefit from our success’ is a pretty difficult principle to run a business on." [18]

References

  1. ↑ Roose, Kevin (July 11, 2023). "Inside the White-Hot Center of A.I. Doomerism" . New York Times.
  2. ↑ Oreskovic, Alexei (July 11, 2023). "Anthropic CEO A.I. risks: short, medium, and long-term". Fortune.
  3. 1 2 3 Amodei, Dario (2024-10-11). "Dario Amodei — Machines of Loving Grace" . Retrieved 2024-11-18.
  4. 1 2 Sullivan, Mark (October 17, 2024). "Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pens a smart look at our AI future". Fast Company.
  5. 1 2 Murgia, Madhumita (2024-12-05). "Anthropic's Dario Amodei: Democracies must maintain the lead in AI". Financial Times. Retrieved 2025-08-12.
  6. ↑ Levy, Steven. "If Anthropic Succeeds, a Nation of Benevolent AI Geniuses Could Be Born". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved 2025-03-28.
  7. ↑ "Lowell Alumni Newsletter Winter 2008 by Lowell Alumni Association". Issuu. August 23, 2014.
  8. ↑ Fuller-Wright, Liz (September 12, 2023). "TIME Magazine's TIME100 artificial intelligence list honors six Princetonians". Princeton University.
  9. ↑ Amodei, Dario (2011). Network-Scale Electrophysiology: Measuring and Understanding the Collective Behavior of Neural Circuits (Thesis).
  10. ↑ "Dario Amodei, PhD". The Hertz Foundation.
  11. ↑ "Dario Amodei". LinkedIn.
  12. ↑ Hao, Karen (February 17, 2020). "The messy, secretive reality behind OpenAI's bid to save the world". MIT Technology Review.
  13. ↑ Goldman, Sharon (April 7, 2023). "As Anthropic seeks billions to take on OpenAI, 'industrial capture' is nigh. Or is it?". VentureBeat.
  14. ↑ Dastin, Jeffrey (November 21, 2023). "OpenAI's board approached Anthropic CEO about top job and merger". Reuters.
  15. ↑ Kutcher, Ashton (16 April 2025). "Dario Amodei: The 100 Most Influential People of 2025". TIME. Retrieved 18 April 2025.
  16. ↑ "Anthropic's Amodei Warns US Senators of AI-Powered Weapons" . Bloomberg. July 25, 2023.
  17. ↑ Capoot, Ashley (2025-07-14). "Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI granted up to $200 million for AI work from Defense Department". CNBC. Retrieved 2025-08-12.
  18. ↑ Robison, Kylie. "Leaked Memo: Anthropic CEO Says the Company Will Pursue Gulf State Investments After All". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved 2025-08-12.
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