Anthropic co-founder on quitting OpenAI, AGI predictions, $100M talent wars, 20% unemployment, and the nightmare scenarios keeping him up at night | Ben Mann

Benjamin Mann is a co-founder of Anthropic, an AI startup dedicated to building aligned, safety-first AI systems. Prior to Anthropic, Ben was one of the architects of GPT-3 at OpenAI. He left OpenAI driven by the mission to ensure that AI benefits humanity. In this episode, Ben opens up about the accelerating progress in AI and the urgent need to steer it responsibly.In this conversation, we discuss:1. The inside story of leaving OpenAI with the entire safety team to start Anthropic2. How Meta’s $100M offers reveal the true market price of top AI talent3. Why AI progress is still accelerating (not plateauing), and how most people misjudge the exponential4. Ben’s “economic Turing test” for knowing when we’ve achieved AGI—and why it’s likely coming by 2027-20285. Why he believes 20% unemployment is inevitable6. The AI nightmare scenarios that concern him most—and how he believes we can still avoid them7. How focusing on AI safety created Claude’s beloved personality8. What three skills he’s teaching his kids instead of traditional academics—Brought to you by:Sauce—Turn customer pain into product revenue: https://sauce.app/lennyLucidLink—Real-time cloud storage for teams: https://www.lucidlink.com/lennyFin—The #1 AI agent for customer service: https://fin.ai/lenny—Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropic-co-founder-benjamin-mann—My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/168107911/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation—Where to find Ben Mann:• X: https://x.com/8enmann• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-mann/• Website: https://benjmann.net/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Introduction to Benjamin(04:43) The AI talent war(06:28) AI progress and scaling laws(10:50) Defining AGI and the economic Turing test(12:26) The impact of AI on jobs