# Amodei Answers Encode's Calvin: Defends Anthropic's 'Race to the Top', Concedes Three Items

Times of AI Desk · 2026-10-21 · Frontier Labs

[https://timesof.ai/2026/10/amodei-answers-calvin-defends-race-to-the-top-concedes-three-items](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/amodei-answers-calvin-defends-race-to-the-top-concedes-three-items)

> In a long X post, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei replied to Encode AI's Nathan Calvin, listing nine commercially costly safety decisions and saying three of Calvin's nine items could have been handled better. Business Insider says those include a draft federal bill. Amodei says he stands by Anthropic's record.

Amodei's reply concedes a few points of process but none of strategy. On the evening of **Tuesday, October 20**, US time (02:26 UTC on **Wednesday, October 21**), Anthropic CEO **Dario Amodei** answered **Nathan Calvin**, chief strategy officer of the AI-safety advocacy group **Encode AI**, in a long post on X. He wrote that he agreed "some of the examples you cite were mistakes by Anthropic," but disagreed "with the thrust of your post."

## What Calvin argued, as reported

**Business Insider** says Calvin's post on **Monday, October 19** listed nine Anthropic actions over the past year that he said undermined its safety commitments, including compute deals worth more than **$500 billion** and growing reliance on Claude to develop its models. **India Today** says Calvin also pointed to plans for custom chips, changes to Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy (RSP), and its proposed federal AI safety bill, which he argued could weaken state-level protections.

## Amodei's reply

Amodei restated Anthropic's strategy: "by showing how it's possible to build the technology responsibly, we can raise the bar for the entire industry." He then listed nine decisions over the same year that he said "were very costly to us commercially while having strong safety benefits." They include Anthropic's role in California's SB 53, strict biological safeguards, and holding back Mythos-class models: "we first had Mythos-class models in February but didn't make them generally available until June." The list also includes advocating government power to block model releases, backing export controls on chips to China, restricting sales of AI services to PRC-controlled companies, and putting 5% of the company into a public benefit fund, which we [covered when it was announced](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/anthropic-public-benefit-fund-5pct-shares).

He wrote that "any decision, on any topic, can always be portrayed as a nefarious scheme," and said Calvin's items 1–4 "are all simply examples of what it means to compete at the frontier."

## What he conceded

"I agree we could have handled your items 7, 8, and 9 better," Amodei wrote, putting them in the category of "rhetoric or policy communication that wasn't carefully written" or of fast-changing circumstances not reaching other teams quickly enough. He noted that Anthropic "is over 5,000 people" and wrote: "I am of course the CEO, and I take responsibility." His post does not say what those three items are. **Business Insider** reports that the issues Amodei said could have been handled better included a draft bill Anthropic circulated to Congress this month.

He called Calvin's fifth item, the change to the RSP, "the most substantive item," and defended it. On Calvin's sixth item, having what Amodei calls an FCF, through which he says Anthropic intends to meet its regulatory obligations, in addition to the RSP, he wrote: "I promise to look into it further." He closed: "I am extremely proud of our track record and stand by it. I will have more to say soon about how we are going to further live our values in this moment of rapid change."

## Limits

- Calvin's points here come from Business Insider's and India Today's accounts of his post. The mapping of Amodei's items 7–9 to the draft bill is Business Insider's.
- The post commits to no change to the RSP or the draft bill.

## Sources

- [Dario Amodei on X: reply to Nathan Calvin (October 21, 2026, 02:26 UTC)](https://x.com/DarioAmodei/status/2112732230124818891)
- [Business Insider: Dario Amodei spent 2,000 words laying out to a critic on X why Anthropic must persist in the AI 'race to the top' (October 21, 2026)](https://www.businessinsider.com/dario-amodei-anthropic-race-to-top-ai-safety-2026-10)
- [India Today: Dario Amodei says Anthropic has made many mistakes in race to the top, will do better (October 21, 2026)](https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/dario-amodei-says-anthropic-has-made-many-mistakes-in-race-to-the-top-will-do-better-3021834-2026-10-21)
- [Times of AI: Anthropic commits 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund (October 20, 2026)](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/anthropic-public-benefit-fund-5pct-shares)