Before He Was Warning About AI, A College-Age Dario Amodei Warned That The Iraq War Would Hurt Science Jobs — And That Prediction Didn’t Pan Out Either

Twenty-three years before he became the AI industry’s most prominent doomsayer, Dario Amodei stood at a podium in Pasadena City Hall and warned local lawmakers that a war was about to wreck his university. On March 10, 2003, a sophomore Amodei addressed the Pasadena City Council with a petition opposing the invasion of Iraq, signed by hundreds of members of the Caltech community. He read the petition’s language into the record — the signatories called themselves deeply troubled that the technology they were building might be turned toward indiscriminate war, and argued that any response to terrorism should run through the United Nations rather than a unilateral strike. Then he turned to what the war would mean for his own school.

First reported by OfficeChai. This page is a short excerpt; the full text is theirs.