Anthropic Board Member Reed Hastings Says “Creative Destruction” Is The Main AI Risk

On Monday, amid a flood of AI news, Anthropic board member Reed Hastings said he believes artificial intelligence will put many companies at risk, but probably will not threaten the human race.

Hastings co-founded Netflix and used to be its CEO. He joined the board of Anthropic, the company that makes Claude, last year. On the podcast On with Kara Swisher, he talked about Anthropic and the wider AI industry. He also shared his thoughts on recent problems at his former university.

In recent weeks, several former employees of Anthropic and OpenAI have made headlines by warning that there is more than a 10% chance that humans could become extinct within the next decade. Researcher Jacob Coxon made this prediction, which spread widely on social media, and then appeared in many media interviews. Hastings said Coxon “is not the ideal messenger,” but added that the warning still “resonates” with the public.

“We lived through a terrible era with nuclear weapons where we could have blown each other up and there were times when it was close and I don’t want to repeat it,” Hastings said. “I don’t want to just because we can, get through a 10% chance of nuclear holocaust, let’s not do that again. So let’s keep the odds way, way low about what it can do. But on the same lens, you can get a lot of attention by saying the world’s going to end tomorrow. We humans, we’re very focused on Armageddon.”

Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, recently joined other top business leaders in warning about the dangers of AI as it develops quickly and becomes more advanced.

Meanwhile, Anthropic hopes to become one of the world’s most valuable companies when it goes public, likely in the middle or latter part of November. On Monday, it filed a prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The 400-page document gives investors information about the company’s financial results, business risks, plans and other matters. It showed that revenue in the first half of 2026 was 14 times higher than in the same period in 2025, reaching $16.3 billion. The company reported a net loss of $80.7 billion, largely because of a one-time charge.

The company’s expected value after its initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq stock market is still uncertain. Estimates put it between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion. Its stock ticker symbol will be ANT.

Hastings believes “creative destruction” is a much bigger risk than the idea that AI could destroy humanity. Creative destruction is when new ideas and technologies replace older businesses and ways of working. “Companies are going to get very competitive,” he said. “Take Oracle. There’ll be an Oracle challenger that will use AI and build an incredible database or set of applications that will be much lower cost. And that’s the creative destruction. It’s going to speed up capitalism and give entrepreneurs … [a way to] compete with everybody.”

Alongside the many news reports about Anthropic, Meta and Microsoft also made major announcements. Meta said it plans to raise $95 billion by selling shares to help it expand its work in AI. Microsoft, meanwhile, said it was offering voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees as it moves resources toward AI.