Kevin Roose
Technology journalist and author covering AI and the labs building it, and a former New York Times technology columnist.
“One quote that someone gave to me when I was writing the book about Dario, who knows him well, was something to the effect of, this guy cannot tell a lie to save his life. And this person said, that's an asset for us on even numbered days and a liability on odd numbered days.”
ChinaTalk · Geopolitics & World Affairs · October 2026
Roose is talking about a video of Dario Amodei alongside Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang, which he says he has watched at least a dozen times. What he sees in it is how uncomfortable Amodei is and how unable he is to hide it. The line is Roose relaying, from memory, what someone close to Amodei told him.
Transcript
on the button.
Yes. And the dynamic of the like, only I can be the savior for humanity. Like watching Dario go to the White House and, you know, sort of say nice things about Trump as a kind of metaphor for these, I guess, like compromising on your principles, maybe, or just like grappling with the fact that, you know, you can't just like live the pure life that you were living in 2018. I mean, Dario, even he had this line at one point where he was thinking about taking money from the Saudis or something. And he's like, ah, you know, you got to do what you can to make the machine God. I just, the, the sort of idealism-realism trade-off, maybe, if you can talk a little bit about
that video of Dario and Zuckerberg and Jensen, like that was a rich text. I have watched that now, like, at least a dozen times. And every time I like find some new detail to fixate on, I think what you see in that moment is how deeply uncomfortable Dario is and how utterly incapable he is of hiding his discomfort. You know, one quote that someone gave to me when I was writing the book about Dario, who knows him well, was something to the effect of, this guy cannot tell a lie to save his life. And that this person said, that's an asset for us on even numbered days and a liability on odd numbered days. Like sometimes you love the principle and just the absolute inability to like filter or have a poker face or anything. And then other times you're just like, could you please just say the thing that's going to get us out of this horrible mess we're in? And I think that was a situation where like he said the things, like he appears to have, you know, been sort of bullied into submission a little bit. But you could kind of see him trying to like cling to his principle even in that moment and the obvious physical discomfort he was feeling at having to like say things that he didn't agree with.
Yeah. You have the story of Dario and Tom Brown having a dinner with Jensen. And Jensen's just like, you know, he's doing some CEO shit. He's like, we're going to build the biggest, coolest data center ever. And Dario's like, define biggest, define coolest. And Jensen's like, what is the deal? And then you have someone told you that Dario said that, you know, Jensen was kind of trumpy in the way he was just like saying words with superlatives attached to them. Yeah, it's endearing, but like, yeah, when you, when you, once you have a $2 trillion company, like you're responsible for things. And there's like a bigger game he's trying to play. Right.
Yeah. And I think there's some tragedy there. I hate when people are like, why is Dario just like speaking his mind? Why doesn't he just talk more about the benefits of AI? And it's like, I think people on some level want to be lied to. Like, that's my only interpretation of that. Like, it is, it is rare to have someone who's that powerful and also that bad at lying. And I don't think the problem with Anthropic is that Dario is not good enough at lying. Like, I don't actually think that's a better world where like he goes and gets a bunch of media training and they tell him how to like look like he's not about to jump out of his skin when he's like saying something he patently doesn't believe. Like I think that's one of the better qualities. That he has. I think people just don't like it or it makes them uncomfortable. So they kind of wish he were slicker or something.
Yeah. And there's like the analogy of Zuckerberg, right? Who's just like, who was one of these weirdos? I mean, he wasn't into science, really, but like he was like also deeply autistic and like deeply uncomfortable to be around and would say things where people would be like, what the fuck? And he's, you know, he's ironed that out of him. Does that mean I trust him more?
More from ChinaTalk
