Abstract:
According to "Business Insider", Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei argued with himself on a national television show last Saturday night. Of course, this is just one scene in the show. In the latest episode of Saturday Night Live, Amodei was parodied by Jane Wickline. Wakeling, who plays Amodei in his first season as a regular on "Saturday Night Live," portrays him as a bumbling megalomaniac struggling to explain why his own technology won't destroy the world.
Amodei
In Wakeling's interpretation, Amodei possesses two personalities: one media-trained, the other frighteningly completely uninhibited. The two characters have many conversations throughout the show.
When Michael Che, the host of "Saturday Night Live's" "Weekend Update" news satire segment, asked Wakelin about the merits of AI, the two "Amodei" started a conversation.
"Dario, don't go around and finish your sentence quickly." Amodei, who has received media training, said.
"I can't do it," replied the other Amodei.
Amodei played by Wakelin
Earlier this month, the real Amodei published a very serious article on his personal website. In the article, he stated that AI models are rapidly losing control, and called on cutting-edge AI companies to coordinate to slow down AI development, while advocating government regulation.
As his article was published, the debate over the risks of AI doomsday was reaching a fever pitch. Days before that, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and began giving interviews to the media, warning that AI labs were "gambled with our lives," further fueling the debate.U.S. President Trump mocked Amodei in a post on his truth social media, accusing him of "pretending to be a perfect little angel." Trump has shown no interest in regulating AI, although he did pledge last week to create an "AI Corps" to oversee AI companies.
In recent weeks, Amodei has been touting Anthropic's breakthroughs in medical research and protein structure, while also refraining from issuing pessimistic predictions about the end of AI. So far, these AI safety warnings have failed to convince most people in Washington or Silicon Valley that development of the technology should be paused or slowed.
That didn't stop "Saturday Night Live" from doing spoofs, though.
"AI is the devil, and I am its creator!" Wakelin said when playing Amodei in the show.
This program attracted the attention of at least one person in the AI industry: Yann LeCun, Meta’s former chief AI scientist and a long-time critic of AI doomsday theory, responded to the clip of Wakelin imitating Amodei on X and posted a series of laughing emoticons.
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