AI firms must confront risks 'or repeat tobacco's mistakes

Artificial intelligence companies must be transparent about the risks posed by their products or be in danger of repeating the mistakes of tobacco and opioid firms, according to the chief executive of the AI startup Anthropic.

- Dan Milmo

Dario Amodei, who runs the US company behind the Claude chatbot, said he believed AI would become smarter than “most or all humans in most or all ways”, and urged his peers to “call it as you see it”.

Amodei told CBS News that a lack of transparency about the impact of powerful Al would replay the errors of cigarette and opioid firms that failed to raise a red flag over the potential health damage of their products.

“You could end up in the world of, like, the cigarette companies, or the opioid companies, where they knew there were dangers and they didn’t talk about them, and certainly did not prevent them,” he said.