SNL Weekend Update: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on A.I.'S Threat to Humanity [video] | Hacker News Reader

SNL Weekend Update: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on A.I.'S Threat to Humanity [video]

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194 pointsCharlesW105 comments

This is the best thing Jane Wickline has done. I worried about whether she was on the bubble because she's so situational (I think that's a good thing), but clearly she's got staying power.

i just learned her partner is named Henry Hornbuckle now this is power couple we deserve but not the one we need right now

Her mother also just happens to be Lorne Michaels long term assistant

And her father worked for Letterman.

When Dario talks to himself sotto voce and then answers himself in a raspy voice, Gollum-like, made me lose it. I once encountered a severely cognitively deficient individual on the bus who calmed himself in the exact same fashion. It's almost a perfectly succinct psychological snapshot of the character they're trying to create.

They missed an opportunity to talk about 'my precious AI' or have the gollum-like voice talk in claudeisms ('lever', 'honest take', 'load bearing'). I wasn't entirely clear on the skits working theory, is this a crazy guy that thinks he has the one ring but really has a cereal box toy?

“My precious” would have been too on the nose for the Gollum part for me.

Claudisms could be fun but probably too obscure for the target audience.

I imagine 99% of viewers have never seen Dario speak either.

I haven’t myself. I don’t know his name. So in many ways, I’m a more normal person. I’m aware they keep claiming that AI will kill everyone, but that’s about as much as I know. I didn’t even know if the CEO was claiming it or just underlings.

It wasn’t until I saw comments here that I found out they weren’t making up the gollum thing and he apparently talks to himself a bit like that.

Pray tell which NORTA bus line this was so I can add it to my list of lines to avoid, like the 8 where I had to duck as a AK 47 wielding car crossed in front of us perpendicularly firing at another one in front

It was MBTA. I'm from the northeast.

Green line?

Is this supposed to be funny?

Hard to comprehend how we've gone from Norm MacDonald being so relentlessly bold he was fired, to this sterility, in 30 years.

Dario?

30 years is a long ass time. Did you miss what happened to the Simpsons over 30 years?

Man, the Simpsons stopped being funny a few years in, I have no idea what they’ve even been doing since then.

"A few years" is like ten, in their case. Homer v New York is like season 9 or 10

But it falls off very quickly after that, that it's still on the air today is elder abuse

I think they are joking. I would be surprised if someone thinks that 30 fucking years are too little time to something to change

I’m surprised that people expect no change over 30 years. Of course a show like SNL will change, it’s the cast of Theseus.

The show wouldn't be the same even if they had the same cast. People change as they get old, the humour changes as well. As people say: the only constant in life is change.

> Hard to comprehend how we've gone from Norm MacDonald being so relentlessly bold he was fired, to this sterility, in 30 years.

Is it, though?

Wouldn't it be more strange if the former didn't eventually lead to the latter?

Listen to a Dario interview. I think it's pretty on the mark

I didn't watch the OP. I just know most actually controversial content almost never makes it to broadcast these days.

Hating on AI or its CEO doesn't seem very risky or controversial (for now [0])

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49824686

Or George Carlin - perhaps it's just me, but modern shows aren't that funny anymore.

I think it correlates with us getting old. They seem plenty funny for 20 year olds, which is why they're popular.

I smirked at the opening joke. But yeah, in true SNL fashion, it's toothless. In this case, they repeated the same joke, with a bunch of nonsequiters. Pretty typical.

SNL has never been funny, at least not in my adulthood. For instance, I got chummed by YouTube, and hooked into watching Tiny Horse, which was embarrassing for both the actors and viewers alike. The the skits play like pre-recorded improv.

haven't watched yet, but, if this is how Art is received (in whatever form), then what is polished and presented on a platter (being turned down left, right and centre by commenters when the real audience is sitting in front of them, secondary to the camera that is worth more than their monthly paycheque or whatever other leverage the production machine behind the troupe has) needs to have a solid bleeding-edge punchline but also seasoned actors and entertainers willing to stand up to deliver it on time, (live but also not at risk of being delisted, demonetized, or put under an NDA that prevents you from speaking in any form of media unknowingly for exchange for a measly fiat currency), and then go online and search for themselves to find tips to improve for next week's show that people aren't tuning into as much live partially due to the discrepancies in the capitalistic system that's being pointed out nightly in comedy clubs around the globe, but, gotta be there to hear it & gotta be here to advance it - just not all the time, please. (reminder to myself in a way)

It's a 3 minutes video. How can you write such a long essay about it with so many opinions without stopping 3 minutes to watch it?

because it's SNL, I'm obviously going to watch it. What I wanted to ask, though, first, may I see the Art critic's credentials before I consume the piece of Art being criticized? [edit]"Video unavailable The uploader has not made this video available in your country" lol I guess it ain't obvious.

Recently I was channel surfing and caught some of the early seasons of SNL (Murray, Chase, Belushi, Radner, etc.). Someone syndicated the episodes into 30 minute shows with a few skits per show. They actually weren't as good as I remembered. Maybe one skit was funny per show. Maybe it was just something new and different in the 70's, with people making jokes about pot use and such. But it didn't really stand the test of time.

I urge you to urge me to stop is critical Super Dario

This one’s better. The UK delivers: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7gPGHx7sYNk&pp=ygUSc25sIHdlZWt...

Much better, but it's still SNL. They seem to do a slightly better job at not breaking character.

Larry Dean as King Charles is ... freaky.

Kind of feels wrong to satirise Diana though. Maybe I'm over-sensitive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5krXOvokj1c is hilarious lol. "Taking the artual parsh" "I'll leave you to it"

"This is ook-waeid"

I miss The Day Today.

Me too. The days when British reporters could conduct interviews with German ministers in fluent German.

Favs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Bq_dkPkQUU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3BO6GP9NMY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U-7L1tmBAo (Brass Eye, a kind of sequel to The Day Today, by the same guy)

Video unavailable

The uploader has not made this video available in your country

Was expecting it to be US-only, but the list of blocked countries is odd.

Andorra, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Algeria, France, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Comoros (the), Luxembourg, Morocco, Monaco, Martinique, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Réunion, Seychelles, Tunisia, Wallis and Futuna, Mayotte

I assume NBC has distribution deals with a handful of channels who air SNL in their respective countries.

And most of the countries on this list probably fall under some French channel’s domain since they are dependencies (edit: or former colonies).

Sounds plausible. In Germany, which is on the list, the show runs in syndication on ProSieben. They have their own VOD service and people can probably stream it there.

I listened to the interview that Dario did with Anderson Cooper after seeing this video.

"Nah, this is slapstick; she was clearly trying for laughs though the Gollum thing was absolutely hilarious."

But no. She ABSOLUTELY CRUSHED. I know Dario is a very smart Dude, but he gives heavy SBF vibes on camera.

Her character's voice at times reminds me of that Rick and Morty court room sketch. NSFW. Pretty hilarious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vN_PEmeKb0

Seems like a gollum thing to me.

I for one am glad to see society moving from deference to skepticism of these valley elite

It's all just a big scam to scare the public into buying robot insurance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Gh_IcK8UM

lol, that's good

Lawfare Media recently, actually proposed a mutualize insurance system for Ai

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/bootstrapping-frontier-...

I don't think it such a bad idea that the Big Ai labs put money into a fund for their negligence, but that should not relieve them of criminal liabilities

my consternation is that they likely have sufficient money to avoid consequences, like the sacks and the opioid epidemic, two-tier justice system at it's finest...

An insurance policy with a robot plan? Certainly, I’m too old!

Does it apply when robo-advisors make bad investments?

In reality, it is a big scam to trick the public into thinking AI is dangerous and needs to be regulated. Then the government can limit it so only the preferred companies can continue to develop it.

It's because both frontier companies are worried about plateauing and there's no barrier to competition. They both have upcoming IPOs, too.

To be fair, I think most of this is sci-fi brain rot, but the fact that 2 trillion-dollar companies supposedly have RSI as their #1 priority by a long shot is concerning to me

The I in RSI... Improvement or Immolation... tbd...

In the hands of the wrong people, AI IS dangerous! And it IS in the hands of the wrong people!

I generally don't think SNL is very funny but I think it's quite socially healthy that they make fun of the political and economic elites. I wonder if we mapped out their targets if there would be any glaring omissions that would stand out.

This video didn't make me laugh but I appreciate the flexing of the first amendment. They should continue with other AI-related figures.

I disagree there are so many other ways to be funny than making fun of someone's stuttering. We shouldn't be bullying people delivering trillions of dollars of value to society.

the idea of a caricature is to exaggerate the features someone is most insecure about. That's what Spitting Image is.

That is literally bullying. especially when those insecurities are something that can not be fixed. You can't excuse bullying because "it's for humor." It's cruel.

I think Dario will be fine. I don't have much sympathy.

And yes, it is indeed because he's a billionaire actively shaping a worse society. Not because it's okay to make fun of impediments when it's on rich people.

You can't bully someone so much more powerful. Bullying is saying AI will replace devs, 10% chance of everybody dying, etc.

I can excuse bullying powerful people in all cases, especially when it's funny

Bullying implies a power imbalance that does not exist here

If you can't see it as jocks bullying the nerds, then see it as just harassment. You are getting caught up on the exact words and not that it makes whoever a jerk to put people down.

Search "punching down vs punching up in comedy" and you'll understand why it's not bullying.

I still don't get it. Especially with shows with large distribution merely being a public figure pails in comparison. Dario has no ability to defend himself here. Any post he makes on social media is unable to reach the same people. The idea that public figures can be bullied and harassed just serves bullies' interest in defining a way to morally continue their antics of hurting others.

> public figures can be bullied and harassed

But he's not being bullied and being harassed. He's a public figure and he has fuck you money. If he doesn't like people making jokes about him, he can simply shut up, disappear from public space and live comfortable life without ever working again.

> We shouldn't be bullying people delivering trillions of dollars of value to society.

Sure, but what about the people who consume trillions of dollars of value?

> We shouldn't be bullying people delivering trillions of dollars of value to society.

Surely, you mean trillions of dollars of negative value?

Agreed. I wish they would have thrown in a "guardrails to stop me, but mostly my competitors" so the public would think about that possibility more.

Pretty funny tbh, it is amazing these clowns have so much influence over such large investments...

Hey how about we go back to LLM/AI being a simple knowledge request service? You have a model trained on data, you request a text or media response from that knowledge model.

No agents. And if someone loops the response into an agent, well, then they are legally liable for personally doing that.

I’m looking so much forward to the bubble popping and LLM to be seen as a standard software. They were so much more interesting without the whole absurd 14y-old-first-sci-fi hype around them :(

I know it’s a little OT, but I keep seeing the same misquotation all over the place. Right at the beginning Michael Che refers to the claim that “there’s a 10% chance that AI could wipe out humanity within 10 years.”

But that isn’t what the often-misquoted current and former Anthropic employees said. They said it was a 10% chance of it happening by the end of the current decade [0], i.e. by 2030, not 2036.

0: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/09/anthropic...

But what does it matter? It’s not like that number is based on any science. It’s literally p (doom | vibes).

what does the scientific literature say then?

Unfortunately, this question was never asked by any news organization or of Coxon as he ran to the press. People who would usually ask to "see the work" never did because it comfortably confirmed their biases.

Specifically, I have no idea what the research says, or even if it exists, I wish we had a system to figure that out instead of exciting Twitter "whistleblower" threads.

I feel like if the doomers are correct and AGI happens research can't say anything about it. We won't be able to predict the outcome of something more intelligent than us or that can disrupt society so thoroughly. It's already causing major problems.

You are wrong. The confusion arises because Coxon said “within the decade” with no associated probability and Hubinger said “within the next decade” at 10%.

It’s not funny. It could be, Dario is idiosyncratic enough they could have done a really good send up of him, this just wasn’t it.

To be honest I struggle to understand why SNL endures. It has never been funny with very very few exceptions.

Yeah it wasn’t great. Other parts of this week’s Weekend Update were better like the Meta AI character having the same dead eyes as Zuck or Tucker Carlson discussing movies. That wasn’t great but had some fun in pure ridiculousness.

Either way the fact this is even a sketch says a lot about where we are. They clearly think enough people know about this discussion, and him specifically, to be able to pull this off. If you made an SNL sketch about other people HN talks about the audience would just be totally confused and lost.

He has earned the very dubious honor of joining Elizabeth Holmes and Zuckerberg as “weirdo tech people to make fun of”.

How long until the President of the United States threatens to pull licenses for NBC over their anti-AI viewpoint?

it’s alright, they’re making fun of the “security risk” Anthropic’s CEO, not their darling Altman

Trump doesn’t like Dario, he has been invited to White House I guess to make him stop causing drama https://x.com/Polymarket/status/2104238992254222679?s=20

Why is this on the front page of HN?

For a while, it has felt like anything LLM-related hits the front page.

Thankfully https://www.unslop.news/ exists!

How did everyone forget how to be funny? It's like there's a formula that's been patented and hidden away so no one else can find it.

> The uploader has not made this video available in your country

Here you go: https://www.instagram.com/reels/Ddxyuq4N9vj/ (had the same problem)

It's so stupid, like why would they block it on YouTube, but not on instagram. Is the copyright law only applicable in YouTube

Copyright might be part of this; I haven’t thought that through. But this restriction is about whose turf they’re trying to push their product on. SNL has to be pushed through a different distributor in different regions.

This a weird SNL thing, the only ones that does geo block on youtube (afaik), their quality is way down so not even worth enabling VPN to watch them

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