The life of Anthropic's CEO, and how losing his father inspired his vision for AI

Meet the investor running his life with AI

Daniel Ha is a venture capitalist who built a suite of AI agents to boost his productivity, both professionally and personally. At his VC firm, a troupe of agents gathers data on startups and analyzes it from competing perspectives to produce a confidence score. When his dad was diagnosed with cancer, Ha used an oncology-trained AI to help him understand the condition.

A merger between OpenAI and Anthropic was reportedly proposed after Sam Altman's firing

OpenAI's board of directors reportedly reached out to Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, about the possibility of taking over the role left by Altman in 2023. Amodei declined to take over as OpenAI's CEO and to a merger of the two AI startups.

How Anthropic's experimental corporate structure incentivizes safe AI development

As Anthropic is a public benefit corporation, its board is tasked with making sure that AI tools are developed to help people and society thrive. Members of its Long Term Benefit Trust hold no equity in the company, but make up a majority of the board and can act to maintain Anthropic's public benefit purpose.

Anthropic's staff philosopher discusses the importance of teaching ethics to AI

Amanda Askell's work focuses on the behavior and values reflected in Claude, the company's AI chatbot, and how its character can better align with how the "ideal person" would act in Claude's position. She also emphasizes the importance of humans being ethical in their interactions with current models, from which future ones will be built.

A man with organ failure used AI to speed discovery of his miracle drug

David Fajgenbaum had a few months to live after a diagnosis with a rare form of Castleman's disease. By studying his blood, medical records, and broader literature, he was able to identify the cause of his condition and a treatment. He's been in total relapse for ten years.

Sam Altman's life advice

Years ago, before Sam Altman became the CEO of leading AI company OpenAI, he wrote a blog post in honor of his 30th birthday. Specifically, Altman shared some of the life advice he learned in his 20s, including guidance such as, "don't lose touch with old friends. Occasionally stay up until the sun rises talking to people. Have parties." Read the rest here.

Explore (digitally) the Computer History Museum

When IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer won its famous chess rematch with then world champion Garry Kasparov in May 1997, the victory was hailed far and wide as a triumph of artificial intelligence. But John McCarthy—the man who coined the term and pioneered the field of AI research—didn’t see it that way. An obituary about McCarthy—who passed in 2001—and his ideas.

Read Ray Dalio's reflection on his son's death

One of Dalio's sons, Devon Dalio, died in a car crash in December 2020. In a LinkedIn post, Dalio said Devon's death triggered an enormous amount of pain and reflection.

Court documents reveal how Anthropic destroyed millions of books to build its AI models

Anthropic cut the bindings from purchased books and discarded them after scanning to rapidly collect high-quality text at low cost for training Claude. This, despite hiring the former head of partnerships for the Google Books project, which nondestructively scanned millions of books borrowed from libraries before returning them.

Dario Amodei explains what led to his company being designated a supply chain risk

When pressed about the use of Claude in the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Anthropic's CEO acknowledged its contract with the Pentagon. However, he also emphasized that Claude is not to be used for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons, in part because the technology is not yet safe or reliable for such uses.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang once saved Nvidia from bankruptcy with a multi-million dollar Hail Mary

Nvidia is now known as one of the top companies contributing to the AI boom, but back in the 1990s, it almost failed. One last-ditch effort conversation that CEO Jensen Huang had with an investor saved the company.

Aurea's father came upon polygenic risk scores after reading a news article about it

Rafal Smigrodzki, a neurologist with a PhD in genetics, first heard of the polygenic risk score offering after reading about it in a 2017 MIT Technology Review feature that focused on the company they eventually used, Genomic Prediction.

What does AI mean for the future of global healthcare?

The World Economic Forum's 2023 Technology Pioneers are a collection of groundbreaking leaders from over 30 countries who are striving to shape the future by addressing a range of global challenges. In the World Economic Forum's recent article, these pioneers convened to discuss the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning within the healthcare sector.

Dave Asprey is considered one of the fathers of modern biohacking

Entrepreneur Dave Asprey wants to live longer than anyone else, a desire that's led him to biohacking. Asprey relies on supplements, stem cell treatments, rigid dieting, exercise, and more. The inventor of Bulletproof Coffee has no medical or nutritional training, though that's not unusual among biohacking's DIY experimenters.

You can draft a will designed to block AI resurrection—but the request may be ignored

Ars Technica spoke with legal experts about how—and if—people could design their wills to prevent AI resurrection. Though this is not yet a common request, one lawyer suggested that people worried about living on in an AI format can draft a power of attorney and a will that prevents those in charge of one's estate from submitting any texts, voice, image, writings, or other personal information to any AI tools.

Stephen Hawking's final message

Famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking—who lived for half a century after being diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease—delivered a final speech just before he died in 2018. In the video, Hawking talks about the importance of science and reason in...

How to prevent a worst-case scenario with synbio

Author and entrepreneur Rob Reid reviews the risks of a world where more and more people have access to the technology needed to create a doomsday bug that could wipe out humanity.

One dad, one hundred babies

A look at the companies offering surrogacy to the ultrarich—including Chinese men taking their reproductive cues from Elon Musk.

Read Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan Zuckerberg's $45B letter to their daughter

After giving birth to their daughter, the Zuckerbergs launched the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in 2015. The pair announced the charitable organization's creation in a letter addressed to their daughter. The Zuckerbergs pledged 99% of their earnings from Facebook over the course of their lives to advance education, cure disease, and transform public policy, something the letter says is a commitment to their daughter's future. The organization has since shifted its focus to artificial intelligence and science.

Despite the rules, a Nobel Prize in medicine has been awarded posthumously

Ralph Steinman, whose work revealed how dendritic cells activate immune responses, passed away just days before being named a Nobel laureate. Although Nobel Prizes cannot be awarded posthumously, the committee made an exception because they believed he was alive at the time of the decision.

When he first enrolled at Princeton University, Jeff Bezos wanted to study physics

He later changed his major to electrical engineering and computer science. He graduated Summa Cum Laude and received job offers at Intel, Nokia, and Accenture, but he declined those offers in favor of a job at a fintech startup.

Learn about Palantir CEO Alex Karp's background—including his history of social activism

Palantir has been criticized for its close proximity to conservative politics, including the company's partnership with ICE, cofounder Peter Thiel's long track record of large donations to Donald Trump's campaigns, and the company's support for Israel. But its leader, Alex Karp, is a self-proclaimed progressive with a PhD in social theory. For many, Karp's background and leadership are a paradox for Palantir.

Read an email Steve Jobs wrote himself in 2010

Steve Jobs apparently liked to email himself to save his thoughts. This archival email, written the year before he died, shows Jobs expressing gratitude and wonder for the world and its creative people.

Steve Bannon was made CEO of the company in charge of Biosphere 2 in 1994

After providing $200M to launch and upgrade B2 before its second mission, billionaire philanthropist Ed Bass appointed the future political strategist and then financial consultant to help find new investments and bring costs under control. Fearing interference from non-science experts, Biospherians from the first mission vandalized the project.

A quote by scientist Nikola Tesla

"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result ... His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way."

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

English mathematician Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer algorithm a century before computers existed and hypothesized that computing devices would one day be able to compose music—foreseeing the generative AI systems of today.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Visualize how CRISPR-Cas9—a type of immune system used by single-celled organisms to attack invasive viruses—targets and makes precise changes to a gene's DNA.

About 2,000 US babies are born annually without some portion of their limbs, potentially leading to a lifetime of pricey prosthetics.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.