A Voice of Introduction to AI
Jack Clark: journalist, AI policy wonk, storyteller, co-founder of Anthropic AI
I like
.I first wrote to Clark after one of his
essays captured my own sense of unease about the pace and direction of AI development. Jack replied warmly, comparing revelations spilling from the arXiv to a modern Necronomicon, voicing similar worries about AI, and inviting me for coffee at Anthropic’s San Francisco office. Our brief follow-up messages were delightfully down-to-earth. We quickly joked about young, secular men in San Francisco seeking a hero’s journey, traded thoughts on various government approaches in AI governance, and acknowledged the temptation and risk of embracing extreme solutions when facing existential change.Clark operates in a rare space. He’s somehow embedded as the co-founder of Anthropic, a firm now valued in the tens of billions and a leader in frontier-model development, while retaining the critical distance of an independent commentator. He began as a tech reporter at The Register and later Bloomberg, chronicling cloud and chip battles from the press gallery rather than the boardroom, ‘recklessly’ left journalism in 2016 to join the then-nascent OpenAI, and then again jumped in 2021 to co-found Anthropic, as a more ethically focused AI champion.
Clark’s position, policy focus, and high-level committee work give him privileged access to labs, regulators, and capital, yet his sincere kindness, storytelling, and humanities-media background leave him outward-facing and skeptical of techbro insider groupthink.
If you’re new to AI or introducing someone who’s been skeptical these past few years, there’s no better, calmer, more reasonable and cool-headed voice to get that catchup introduction than Clark.
In this instance published on Jun 4, Clark’s voice is paired with interviewer and American record producer Rick Rubin. Rubin starts with a beginner’s mind and allow Clark to tell the story of AI with depth and ease, as though the two of them are deeply seated in a winter cabin with no place to go.
If anyone in your life, in your workplace, is missing the AI revolution, give them the gift of this two-hour conversational catch up.