AI’s spiciest feud served hot

Years hence, when OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei are reminded of Delhi AI Summit, there is one moment they will recall rather awkwardly. Posing for the defining photo of the Summit, the two doyens of the AI revolution didn’t clasp hands while on stage. Instead they raised stiff, clumsily clenched fists.

After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi grasped and raised Altman’s and Google’s Sundar Pichai’s hands, others on stage tried to follow suit. That would have made for a neatly symbolic image of a united front from the architects of AI, except Altman and Amodei decided to let their rivalry play out in the glare of the world’s media.

In pics beamed across the world instantly, the two stood out looking a bit awkward, breaking a chain of clasped and raised hands. Predictably, social media chatter followed. For those who came in late, this is a rivalry that dates back years, and is emblematic of the divergent ideological views that two of AI’s leaders have on the path that humanity should take with AI.


Back in 2016, Amodei joined the then not-for-profit OpenAI as one of its most influential technical leaders. The differences in the direction that OpenAI should take bobbled to the surface in 2019, after Altman decided to take a $1 billion investment from Microsoft in 2019, and pivoted to become a for-profit.

This had also annoyed early OpenAI backer Elon Musk. This divergence eventually made Amodei, his sister and current president of Anthropic Daniela Amodei, and nine others, worried about the implications of another for-profit corporation controlling a critical technology, to leave OpenAI in 2020 and float Anthropic in 2021.

Interestingly, when they launched Anthropic, it was billed as an AI-Safety company, but the company and its LLM product Claude has since become a for-profit competitor to ChatGPT. Their rivalry is one of the spicier bouts of the current race to be the top of the AI pile, and is playing out via ads in the US to hands in India.

Replying to questions at the AI Summit on the awkward moment, Altman said, “On the thing on stage, I didn’t know what was happening. I was really confused when he grabbed my hand and put it up. I just wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be doing. It was nice.”

What next for AI’s most popcorn worthy tiff ? Ask your favourite LLM. On the 9th of February, during America’s biggest sporting occasion of the year — the Superbowl — Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini and Meta had all aired high decibel ads to lure more folks to their platforms. But the post-superbowl chatter was all about Athropic’s decision to go after ChatGPT’s plans to introduce ads for free users.