Behind the Scenes of the Historic Rivalry Between OpenAI and Anthropic
Explores the internal tensions during OpenAI's founding years and the commercial and safety disagreements that Dario and Daniela Amodei had with the management.
Developments in the field of artificial intelligence in San Francisco show that escalating disagreements between Dario Amodei and other leaders within OpenAI laid the groundwork for the founding of Anthropic.
Dario Amodei and the Large Compute Theory
Physicist Dario Amodei left Google to join OpenAI in 2016 and authored a paper in 2017 arguing that machine intelligence is all about scale.
By 2020, as Amodei led the team developing GPT-2 and GPT-3, researchers such as Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish, and Paul Christiano advanced scaling laws.
Commercial Orientation and Leadership Disagreements
As OpenAI transitioned into a commercial structure, Dario Amodei criticized the company's leadership and experienced disagreements with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman.
During this process, growing distrust with management played a significant role in triggering internal unrest and splits among employees.
The Controversial Nations Plan
A nations plan proposed in 2017 by Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever addressed auctioning off future AGI rights to states such as the US, China, and Russia.
Dario Amodei strongly opposed this plan via an email, arguing that it would trigger an arms race and lead to human rights violations.
Microsoft's Funding and the Erosion of Trust
The controversial nations plan was ultimately shelved once Microsoft provided funding, but trust within the company had already been damaged.
Management's stances on customer lists and Microsoft negotiations, along with decisions such as giving Kanye West a private GPT-3 beta, caused discomfort within the team.
Daniela Amodei and the Safety-Focused Inner Group
Daniela Amodei also had to navigate tense relationships with Greg Brockman and Mira Murati regarding safety and management roles.
Forming an inner group focused on safety and known as Dario's clique, the team ultimately decided to part ways.