Anthropic’s Amodei Warns US Senators of AI-Powered Weapons

• CEO says malign actors could use AI to produce deadly tools
• Panel weighs options to reduce artificial intelligence risks

A CEO whose company says its artificial intelligence products are tools “that people can rely on” warned senators Tuesday that AI is much closer than anticipated to overtaking human intelligence and even helping to produce weapons of mass destruction.

Dario Amodei, chief executive officer and cofounder of Anthropic, cited the need to reduce AI’s short-term risks of bias as well as longer-term risks to humanity. He told a Senate Judiciary Committee panel Tuesday that the medium term poses the most “alarming combination of imminence and severity” — including the possibility that malign actors could harness AI to make it easier to produce biological weapons.