The argument over who created the AI backlash has reached the CEO level. Investor Gavin Baker told Anthropic chief Dario Amodei, on the All-In podcast and in a post on X, that years of dire warnings had backfired, giving regulators and skeptics cover to clamp down on the industry.
Baker suggested the executive tone down the doom and sell AI’s upside. Amodei pushed back on X, saying his essays weigh risk and reward evenly, and that he wrote “Machines of Loving Grace” because the industry was failing to inspire.
The deeper diagnosis he offered: ordinary people do not trust companies, governments, or the tech industry, and always suspect they are being set up. He called the AI backlash the latest chapter of that decades-old trust deficit, and disputed that any single leader’s messaging caused it.
On regulation, Amodei rejected the Silicon Valley shorthand that rules equal regulatory capture. Many people outside the bubble, he said, see regulation as something that constrains corporate power, even if he does not fully share that view.
The criticism he accepts is different: AI companies have not yet delivered on their big promises to benefit the world. He called that “totally on us,” and said Anthropic is working to fix it.
