Dario Amodei

Co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, former VP of Research at OpenAI — physicist-turned-AI-researcher who has become the most prominent voice for taking AI safety seriously while still building frontier models.

Dario Amodei is the co-founder and CEO of Anthropic. Originally trained as a physicist (PhD from Princeton), he transitioned into AI research at Baidu under Andrew Ng, then joined OpenAI, eventually becoming VP of Research. He left OpenAI in 2021 with his sister Daniela Amodei (now Anthropic's President) and several colleagues, citing concerns about how OpenAI was prioritizing capability over safety. He matters because Anthropic — under his leadership — has positioned itself as the lab that takes AI safety most seriously while remaining at the frontier of capability. The Claude product line, Constitutional AI training methodology, the Responsible Scaling Policy, and Anthropic's research on interpretability and alignment all reflect his philosophy: build powerful AI carefully, study it deeply, and incorporate safety from the ground up. He's a notable public communicator on AI futures. His 2024 essay "Machines of Loving Grace" argues for a remarkably optimistic vision of what AGI could enable in science, health, and global development — while still warning about the importance of safety. His public statements often combine technical precision with measured tone. Amodei is regarded as one of the most credible voices on AI policy in Washington, has testified before Congress, and works closely with both US and UK AI safety institutes. Related: Anthropic, Constitutional AI, Claude family, alignment, AI safety.