Something Is Happening to Humanity, And We All Have a Voice in How It Goes

When Oprah Winfrey sits down with Dario and Daniela Amodei, co-founders of Anthropic, and opens with admitting she has asked Claude, “What is the most pressing question Oprah Winfrey should ask Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a sit-down interview?” you have to laugh.

That Claude responded with, “You’ve said there’s a meaningful chance the technology your company is building could cause human extinction, and yet you’re racing to build it faster. How do you justify that to the rest of us who didn’t get a vote?” Well, it makes you sit up and pay attention.

As Dario responded, "Something is happening to humanity, bigger than anything that has happened in hundreds of years, so we need everyone to become an active participant in what's happening”. I recommend you watch the hour-long interview, now available on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5dJqHilu5s

What is the most pressing question Oprah Winfrey should ask Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei?"

But let me start where I think most women watching will want me to: the interview itself revealed something unintentional, and it matters. The opening question put to Dario was sharp, substantive, and worthy of the moment. While the opening question to Daniela, an equal co-founder, was about Thanksgiving dinner!

That diminishes her as a woman and a younger sibling in the same breath, without anyone intending harm. That it came via an AI prompt reflects the biases surfaced and amplified. For many of us, this was the first time we were truly seeing Daniela Amodei. And she deserved better from the opening frame.

What followed, though, was remarkable. Daniela appeared nervous at first, eyes darting, the weight of the moment visible. And honestly? That was deeply human. Imagine being interviewed by Oprah, in any situation, not just when the subject matter is so huge. But Daniela came into her own, and when she did, her background in International Sustainable Development became audible in every sentence. When she spoke of AI as an opportunity to "level the playing field," when she said "knowledge is power," these weren't soundbites. They were the language of someone shaped by knowledge and understanding of equality and justice. They echoed the spirit of the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign's defining message: we're not looking for your money, we're looking for your voice. That framing matters. Daniela wants people to learn, to engage, to decide what they like about AI, and what they don't, and then to use their voice to speak out about it.

Oprah pushed them on every major topic that fills our news headlines, as she should. Will there be a need to think? Will entry-level jobs simply disappear? The Amodei’s were direct: yes, some roles will be displaced. But new ones will emerge, and the human qualities that cannot be automated, empathy, judgment, and connection, will become more valued, not less. They spoke of Anthropic's ongoing standoff with the Pentagon: their refusal to remove safety guardrails for autonomous weapons and mass public surveillance, and their personal fears about doing so, outlining their commitment to not compromising democratic values.

And, they spoke about Anthropic’s latest capability leap, Mythos, now ‘given’ to 40 companies working to address some of the greatest cybersecurity risks and help build a more resilient digital world, even under commercial pressures. These are not small decisions. They are choices about what kind of future gets built.

Dario referenced his New York Times op-ed from mid-2025 as something of a marker in time, a recent moment that already feels like history. Many of us remember discussing it at networking events that don't feel so long ago. That's the pace Anthropic is operating at. That's the pace all of us are living through, whether we've named it yet or not.

Anthropic's mission is ‘the responsible development and maintenance of advanced AI for the long-term benefit of humanity’. Not a company. Not a product. Humanity. They spoke of no one being bigger than that mission; not the founders, not the investors, not the market. The co-founding team holds each other accountable daily. They maintain hope not through certainty, but through shared vigilance. They worry about getting this wrong. Every day. And that collective accountability, that group commitment to staying honest about the stakes, is, they suggested, the thing most likely to keep them on the right side of history.

Which brings us back to where we started. This moment in history is huge. “Something is happening to humanity”. The most important thing Dario and Daniela want us to know is this: the potential benefits of AI are real and vast. Everything could genuinely be better.

But if we get it wrong, the risks are equally real and vast. There is no comfortable middle ground where we can opt out of having an opinion.

At Scarlet Kites, our commitment to human-in-the-loop thinking and ethical practice isn't a policy; it's a position. We believe that the people building these systems must be held accountable by the people living inside them. Daniela's message is our message: learn what this is, form a view, decide what you will and won't accept. And then use your voice; with business leaders, with the governments, with the people who can set the guardrails or who might choose not to.

"Something is happening to humanity, bigger than anything that has happened in hundreds of years, so we need everyone to become an active participant in what's happening”.

Whether we like it or not, all of us are involved. It might be incredible, it might be destructive. It will be transformative. The question is whether we're engaged and use our voices to shape the necessary guardrails, ethics, and investments.

Please watch the interview; it's important. Link above.

Out of interest, this morning I have gone onto Claude and prompted it to define a question I should ask Daniela in a sit-down interview. Now, sadly, it is evident that I am not to the same standard as Oprah and the first question she posed to Dario. But I’m pleased to see my opening question to Daniela is a little stronger:

“When Anthropic is developing its products — the ones that others will then embed into business transformation, healthcare, education, journalism, advertising — who is actually in the room? And how do you ensure that the people most affected by those downstream decisions have genuine influence at the point of creation, not just the benefit of your good intentions?"