Saturday Night Live cast member Jane Wickline performed an impression of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei during last night’s broadcast. Weekend Update host Michael Che introduced the segment by noting how the executive seemed to stumble through a recent press tour, where he appeared to agree with a former employee that artificial intelligence might destroy humanity. Wickline’s portrayal featured a distinctive wig and halting speech patterns that occasionally shifted into Gollum-style exchanges with a dark alter ego. The fictional Amodei confessed that AI is the devil and he is its maker, yet insisted that executives in the field are united in not condoning their own creations. He described the technology as a tool used for building weapons and urged the audience to ask him to stop. When asked about potential benefits like curing cancer, the character stated there is only a ten percent chance the disease will not be a problem for anyone in ten years.
This sketch highlights the growing public fatigue with repeated warnings about existential risk from industry leaders. The joke relies on the contradiction between high-stakes rhetoric and the practical reality of deploying tools that can be dangerous. It suggests that audiences are beginning to view these cautionary tales as performative rather than grounded in immediate operational concerns. The segment mocks the specific narrative that AI development is an uncontrollable force rather than a managed engineering challenge.
* The sketch aired on 27 September 2026
* Wickline portrayed Amodei agreeing with a former employee’s claims
* The character noted a ten percent chance cancer would disappear in a decade
