Dario Amodei says AI's real problem is trust, not fear

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Sunday that AI's growing backlash isn't really about fear of the technology. He called it "fundamentally a crisis of trust." People don't trust big companies, governments, or the tech industry, he said. They assume everyone's "cooking up some new way to screw them over." He was answering investor Gavin Baker, who argues Amodei's own warnings fueled the backlash.

Baker made his case on X and on the All-In podcast. His argument: executives like Amodei keep sounding alarms about AI risk. That messaging, he says, is what's turning the public against the technology, especially data centers. Amodei doesn't buy it. He also conceded a real weakness. He said the fairest criticism of Anthropic and its rivals is that they haven't delivered on their big promises yet. Trust, not tone, is what's actually broken, in his telling.

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Will real-world proof of AI's benefits do what better messaging hasn't? Amodei is betting yes. He didn't offer a concrete example of that proof. But the test he's setting is different from a PR fix: real results people can feel, not softer language. Whether that happens before public patience runs out is the open question.