Many wealthy individuals, especially in the tech industry, view philanthropy as inevitably fraudulent or useless, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, a leading artificial intelligence company, said, describing this attitude as "cynical and nihilistic."
In a 38-page essay titled ‘The Adolescence of Technology: Confronting and Overcoming the Risks of Powerful AI,' shared on January 26, 2026, the Anthropic CEO outlined major risks facing society, including bioterror, autocracy, labour unrest and growing wealth inequality.
Amodei groups the risks into various categories. First, autonomous systems. Second, misuse by individuals, especially in biology. Third, misuse by states, particularly authoritarian ones. Fourth, economic disruption. He states that the AI race is so tempting and important that no one involved can be trusted to slow it down, even when the dangers are huge.
But one paragraph, in particular, caught the attention of Adam Nash, CEO and co-founder of Daffy. Sharing the message on social media, Nash said, “Could not help but catch this particular paragraph by @DarioAmodei @AnthropicAI on philanthropy. It's something we think a lot about @daffygiving.”
In the paragraph, Amodei said, “Wealthy individuals have an obligation to help solve this problem.”
He added, “It is sad to me that many wealthy individuals (especially in the tech industry) have recently adopted a cynical and nihilistic attitude that philanthropy is inevitably fraudulent or useless.”
Countering this view, Amodei pointed to the tangible impact of both private and public philanthropic initiatives. He said that organisations like the Gates Foundation and programmes such as PEPFAR have “saved tens of millions of lives in the developing world, and helped to create economic opportunity in the developed world.”
Amodei also revealed that Anthropic has made philanthropy a core part of its mission. He said that all co-founders have pledged to donate “80% of our wealth,” while staff members have “individually pledged to donate company shares worth billions at current prices,” with the company matching these donations.
On AI's rapid advancement
Amodei says he's not sure whether to completely agree with some people's assessment that human jobs will move to the physical world, which avoids the whole category of “cognitive labor”.
"A lot of physical labor is already being done by machines (e.g., manufacturing) or will soon be done by machines (e.g., driving)," he says, adding powerful AI will be able to accelerate the development of robots, and then control those robots in the physical world.
