Learning from Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei's Favorite Philosopher
- sciart0
- Aug 15
- 1 min read
Excerpt: '“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”- ‘Leviathan’, Thomas Hobbes
In 1651 (a few years before my parents were born), thinky boi Thomas Hobbes dropped Leviathan. His takeaway was brutal: left alone, humans eat each other alive. The only way out was to hand over freedom to a single, unassailable “superbeing” — a Leviathan — that could keep the chaos at bay. Far better a safe but caged existence, even if stripped of freedom, than a reality where we are left to constantly fend for ourselves.
For a long time, Hobbes was just political theory. A debate for classrooms. But no anymore.
Many of today’s Silicon Valley elites share that low opinion of humanity.
They see the public as too dim or volatile to steer the future, and so they celebrate and design their own Leviathans: closed AI systems, walled gardens, algorithmic regimes.
These systems promise progress and efficiency, but often bring with them opaqueness and a lack of accountability."