Dario Amodei On How His AI Predictions Have Been Misunderstood

Misunderstood code predictions

00:00So I I've made this series of predictions on um code and software engineering and and and I think people have repeatedly kind of misunderstood them. So, so let me let me let me let me let me lay out the spectrum, right? like I think it was like you know like you know eight eight or nine months ago or something I said you know the AI model will be writing 90 90% of the lines of code in like you know 3 to 6 months which which happened at least at some places right happened happened at Antropic happened with many people downstream using our models but but that's actually a very weak criterion right people thought I was saying like we won't need 90% of the software engineers those things are worlds apart

The spectrum of AI coding benchmarks

00:40right like I would put the spectrum as 90% of code is written by the model, 100% of code is written by the model and that's a big difference in productivity. Um 90% of the end toend SWE tasks right including things like compiling including things like setting up clusters and environments, testing features, writing memos. 90% of the tasks are written by the models. 100% of today's SUI tasks are are are written by the models. and and even when when when that happens doesn't mean software engineers are out of a job like there's like new higher level things they can do where they can they can manage and then there's a further down the spectrum like you know there's 90% less demand for SWES which I think will happen but like

01:24this is this this is a spectrum and you know I wrote about it in in the adolescence of technology where I went through this kind of spectrum with farming um uh uh and so I I actually totally agree with you on that it's just these are very different benchmarks from each other but we're proceeding through them super fast. It seems like in part of your vision it's like going from 90 to 100. Um first it's going to happen fast and two that somehow that leads to huge productivity improvements. Um whereas when I noticed even in green field projects that people start with cloud code or something people report starting a lot of projects and I'm like do we see in the world out there a renaissance of software all these new

Where are the productivity gains?

02:03features that wouldn't exist otherwise and at least so far it doesn't seem like we see that and so that does make me wonder even if even if like I never had to intervene on cloud code um there is this thing of like there's just the world is complicated jobs are complicated and closing the loop on self-contained systems whether it's just writing software or something, how much sort of how much broader gains we would see just from that. And so maybe that makes us this should dilute our estimation of the country of geniuses. >> I well well I actually I I like I like simultaneously I simultaneously agree with you agree that it's a reason why these things don't happen instantly, but at the same time I think the the the effect is going

Two extremes and Anthropic's growth

02:45to be very fast. So like I don't know you could have these two polls, right? one is like um you know AI is like you know it's not going to make progress it's slow like it's going to take you know kind of forever to diffuse within the economy right economic diffusion has become one of these buzzwords that's like a a reason why we're not going to make AI progress or why AI progress doesn't matter and and you know the other axis is like we'll get recursive self-improvement you know the whole thing you know can't you just draw an exponential line on the on the curve you know it's it's we're going to have you know Dyson spheres around the sun and like you you know so many nanconds after uh you know after after we get recursive I mean

03:24I'm completely caricaturing the view here but like you know there there there are these two extremes but what we've seen from from the beginning you know at least if you look within anthropic there's this bizarre 10x per year growth in revenue that we've seen right so you know in 2023 it was like zero to 100 million 2024 it was 100 million to a billion 2025 it was a billion to like 9 or 10 billion. If you enjoyed this clip, you can watch the full episode here and subscribe for more clips. Thanks.