Dario Must Speak

Jacob Coxon is 27. He left OpenAI for Anthropic because of its safety reputation, found the reputation deserved, and quit the industry anyway. "We're on track for a lot of the most aggressive of these scenarios," he told The Wall Street Journal's Amrith Ramkumar, "where by the end of next year things could be out of control already."

Anthropic didn't comment.

I'll say where I stand. Dario Amodei has been the most serious person running an AI company on this question, and he's paid for it. He's argued that governments should be able to block a dangerous model from shipping. He's called for mandatory third-party audits. He put $200 million into research on what AI does to jobs. In June his company wrote that "it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause."

That's why the silence was so loud. OpenAI's leaders talked all week. Anthropic, preparing one of the largest public offerings ever, said nothing while its own researcher said responsible development can't be done at this pace by anyone.

Here's the communications lesson, and it's an uncomfortable one for my business. "No comment" is a statement. When you've built your name on speaking plainly about risk, silence reads as a change of position, even when it isn't. The person who's been right the longest has to say it again, out loud, on the day it costs him something.

That's when it counts. Dario, we need to hear from you.