One signal

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei was unusually worried about the Y2K computer bug while at high school, according to a recollection from his former physics teacher, Richard Shapiro, reported by OfficeChai.

Shapiro recalled that Amodei belonged to the “end of the world camp” while he and many others expected, at most, a few days of disruption. Y2K did not bring the feared meltdown, after years of work to fix vulnerable systems. It is a small biographical detail, not evidence that Amodei’s current AI warnings are right or wrong. But it offers a glimpse of how early his interest in worst-case technology risks may have begun.

Discuss: Does a track record of worrying early about technological risks make someone’s later warnings more persuasive, or should each prediction stand on its own evidence?

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