People are routinely claiming that as someone in tech, Amodei lacks credibility on biology and has no idea about science.

I'm yet to see someone claim his academic credentials validate his predictions.

I wasn't talking about Amodei specifically, but in general: my take is that overweighting credentials is probably the number one mistake that is made in evaluating whether a complete stranger is qualified to do something or not, especially in positions of power.

If you gather 500 PhDs and put them in one room, and 500 individuals without post-secondary education in another, give them all a quiz, I'm sure that the former room will outperform the latter room on average. Pick one of those 500 PhDs at random and I can probably find a topic where they're completely out of their depth, and perhaps even arrogantly so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease