Dario Amodei wrote on X that the most accurate criticism of AI companies including Anthropic is that they have not yet delivered on their promises, and that only genuine breakthroughs will win public trust. It lands as Anthropic prepares a listing that backers expect to value it at $2trn.
Dario Amodei has conceded the case against his own industry. “The most accurate criticism of AI companies, including Anthropic, is that we haven’t yet delivered on our big promises to benefit the world,” Anthropic’s chief executive wrote on X on Saturday.
His prescription is blunter than the admission. “At this point, saying that AI will cure cancer is more a cliché than it is inspiring, and most people think it is deceptive,” he wrote. “The thing that will work is actually curing cancer.”
The timing gives it weight. Anthropic is weeks from a listing its backers expect to value the company at $2trn in October, a price that rests almost entirely on what the technology will do rather than what it has done.
The public evidence supports his premise. Pew found half of American adults more concerned than excited about AI in daily life, against 10% who were more excited, up from 37% concerned when the question was first asked in 2021.
He does not accept that his own warnings caused it. “I do not agree that my messaging has been disproportionately negative,” he wrote, pointing to Machines of Loving Grace, his 2024 essay arguing that AI could transform the world for the better.
His explanation is broader and harder to test. Public distrust of AI companies, he argued, reflects decades of scepticism towards corporations generally, and “AI is just the latest iteration of it.”
Others were unconvinced that breakthroughs are enough. An OpenAI employee replied that the pharmaceutical industry delivers advances constantly and remains among the least trusted sectors there is.
People will judge AI companies on more than results, she wrote, listing pricing, access, lobbying, opacity, how the gains are shared and who ends up holding the power.
Yann LeCun made the argument Anthropic is least comfortable with. The only way forward is AI that is “widely available, shared, and open,” the former Meta chief AI scientist wrote, a position Anthropic rejects for its frontier models while Meta presses Washington the other way.
Amodei ended with a schedule. Anthropic hopes for “incredible results in the coming years and some early glimmers in the coming months,” which puts the listing comfortably ahead of the glimmers.
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