There’s clearly no love lost between OpenAI and Anthropic, and it’s showing up in their rare simultaneous public appearances as well.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pointedly refused to hold hands at the India AI Summit in New Delhi. During an event, when the top tech leaders attending the summit were on stage with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they decided to together hold hands up as a effort to together show solidarity with how AI could positively impact humanity.
On stage were some of the biggest names in AI — Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta AI Chief Alexandr Wang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. As luck would have it, Altman and Amodei were placed next to each other, to the right of PM Modi. As everyone on stage held the hands of people next to them and raised them, Altman and Amodei seemed confused, and left their hands facing down while looking exceedingly awkward. A few moments later, they did raise their other hand, but made sure it wasn’t touching the other’s. This meant that while one of their hands was held with the person next to them, and the other simply in the air.
There’s obviously a big backstory to this rivalry. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was once an employee at OpenAI, and had a fraction of the share equity as the other bigger names in the company. However in 2021, Amodei, along with some fellow researchers, felt that OpenAI wasn’t serious enough about AI safety, and founded a rival lab in Anthropic. Since parting ways with OpenAI, Anthropic has done exceedingly well, and has even outstripped OpenAI in API revenue it gets from businesses. Anthropic has continued to focus on AI safety, while it transpired that OpenAI had removed “safe AI” from its mission statement. It appears that this rivalry — and disagreements about safety — are still very much in place, and the duo clearly still have enough differences to pointedly refuse to hold hands on stage at a public event.