Dario Amodei: progress is steepening; safeguards must catch up

‘We need to moderate a little bit the pace at which the technology is being built’

EXCERPT

AMODEI: "The conversation right now is that we are on the precipice of something s- really scary. Is this a five alarm fire? I, you know, I, I, I don't ... You know, it depends what you mean by five alarm fire. What, what I would say is this- How would you describe it? What, what I would describe is ... So something I've been saying since, uh, you know, since we started Anthropic, almost since before we started Anthropic, is that this technology is on an exponential, right? It's like you have one, then two, then four, then eight, then 16, then 32. But even as I was saying that to myself, I don't think I fully just appreciated what it would actually be like when the progress was as fast as it was. So we're, we're ... An exponential curve looks a little like this. Where are we on the curve? We're kinda, we're kinda on the bend where it's starting to get steeper. And- So is that a five alarm fire to you? What it, what it means, it, it doesn't mean we need to panic today. It doesn't m- mean we need to shut it all down. What I, I would say- Why not? It's, it's a warning sign. It's a warning sign that we need to slow down. We need to make this technology carefully, and we need to make sure that the, our, our safeguards, our ability to understand it, our ability to control it, keeps up with the pace at which the technology is happening. So far, we've been trying to do that by building the safeguards fast. But I think we've reached the point where, at least to some extent, we need to moderate a little bit the pace at which the technology is being built."

Source: CBS Sunday Morning · Sep 13, 2026 · 96s clip