ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis spoke to Anthropic President Daniela Amodei on the new ‘Claude for Teachers,' AI's energy toll, ethics and why students shouldn’t panic about AI taking future jobs.
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What Daniela Amodei said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Daniela Amodei announced the launch of Claude for Teachers, a free tailored access to Claude Pro for teachers of kindergarten through age 12, designed to help with administrative work and curriculum development tailored to state and regional requirements. She expressed personal excitement, hoping her son's school will adopt it. Amodei addressed parental concerns by noting Claude.ai remains for users 18 and older, as Anthropic does not yet know enough about AI's impact on developing brains. She acknowledged models are not foolproof and discussed constitutional AI as a system of ethics to make models more honest, helpful, and harmless, with harmful response rates dramatically declining. Amodei emphasized teachers retain judgment, with Claude as a partner, not a replacement. She mentioned published constitutions drawing on documents like the UN Declaration of Human Rights. On energy, she said each model generation is more efficient, with Anthropic advocating doing more with less. For graduates, she advised focusing on communication, empathy, and flexibility, as models supplement rather than replace human labor.
Key takeaways
Claude for Teachers provides free Claude Pro access to teachers of kindergarten through age 12, tailored to state and regional curricula.
Claude.ai remains restricted to users 18 and older because Anthropic does not know enough about AI's impact on developing brains.
Constitutional AI, drawing on documents like the UN Declaration of Human Rights, has dramatically reduced harmful response rates over years.
Amodei believes AI models are predominantly supplementing human labor, not replacing it, and human-to-human skills will be ascendant.
With every model generation, Anthropic has become dramatically more efficient in chip usage, advocating doing more with less.
1:32Is this something you would hope to see in your children's school someday?
1:51This is in the hands of teachers now, but what do you say to the parents who are nervous that this new technology is going to repeat those same mistakes?
2:55If this chatbot were to make a mistake, if it were to give the wrong information or bad advice or reinforce bias, who would be accountable for that?
4:25What resources would a teacher have if they weren't sure about a response?
5:07What are the guiding principles and north stars in that ethics category?
7:07What do you say to college graduates who are looking for work right now and the feedback that they're hearing?
Welcome back. AI giant Anthropic today announced a new teaching tool called Claude for Teachers. The new chatbot was designed with input from educators and the company says it can help with everything from administrative work to tailoring lesson plans. Our Rebecca Jarvis spoke exclusively with Anthropic President and co-founder Daniela Amodei about the making of the new product and why the company thinks it will be a gamechanger for the education system. Amodei also answers questions about Claude's code of ethics and why AI's energy use might decrease with time.
Today we are launching Claude for teachers. And this is a tool that allows teachers who are in the classroom with kids from kindergarten through age 12 to have free tailored access to Claude Pro. And this enables them to be able to really take specific curricula and tailor them to the needs of their specific classroom.
One is really helping teachers on the administrative side. So, helping them to fill out paperwork and forms and do a lot of the kind of back-end work that's needed just in the day-to-day of running a classroom. The second one is helping teachers develop curriculum. So, it's tailored to the specific requirements of that state and region in their educational curriculum to really partner with teachers to help them develop tailored learning tools for their specific classroom.
I personally feel really, really excited for what it means. My son is going into kindergarten this year. And I'm really hopeful that his school will adopt, you know, Claude for teachers, to help tailor curriculum for him and for his classmates.
There are going to be parents who hear this and feel nervous because parents have watched their kids with smartphones and screen time and social media and they have seen the unwanted unintended consequences that they weren't really prepared for. This is in the hands of teachers now, but what do you say to the parents who are nervous that this new technology is going to repeat those same mistakes?
I completely understand and relate to this worry. And I think a key difference here is that Claude.ai remains for 18-year-old users and above only. So, individual students below the age of 18 won't have access to the tool directly. And I think this isn't because we necessarily feel, you know, worried that this is, you know, a terrible thing to give to kids, but I think the reality is we just don't know enough about AI's impact on the developing brain for Anthropic to feel comfortable giving access to students directly.
9 more exchanges in this transcript
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Amodei, D. (2026, July 14). Is AI safe in schools? Anthropic’s ‘Claude for Teachers’ shakes up the classroom [Interview transcript]. ABC News. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1114864/
MLA
Daniela Amodei. "Is AI safe in schools? Anthropic’s ‘Claude for Teachers’ shakes up the classroom." ABC News, 14 Jul. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1114864/.
BibTeX
@misc{amodei2026_1114864,
author = {Daniela Amodei},
title = {Is AI safe in schools? Anthropic’s ‘Claude for Teachers’ shakes up the classroom},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, ABC News. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jul},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1114864/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
