AI misalignment: Altman vs Amodei rivalry now on stage | India News
New Delhi: At the AI Impact Summit on Thursday, there was a “caught-off-guard moment” on stage. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited tech leaders to join him on stage for a group photo, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who stood next to each other, stopped holding hands.Instead, the two AI rivals stood next to each other with arms crossed – a subtle but noticeable gesture that stood out in an otherwise celebratory moment.The moment Altman and Amodei decided not to shake hands on stage quickly went viral across social media platforms. Optics gained attention at a time when competition between OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and Anthropic, which develops the cloud, intensified. Both companies aggressively competed to position their models as the AI assistants of choice for users worldwide, intensifying an already uphill battle for global supremacy.Altman later clarified in a media statement, “I was a bit confused… (Prime Minister) Modi was holding my hand, and I wasn’t exactly sure what we were supposed to do.”As other company CEOs shook hands, Amodi and Altman stood awkwardly, elbows touching.Altman and Amodei worked together on OpenAI until 2019. Amodei, his sister, Daniela, and a group of researchers left the company in 2020 after disagreements with Altman and the board over the company’s direction, and later set up Anthropic.Earlier this month, Altman hit out at Anthropic after it used a Super Bowl campaign to criticize the potential introduction of advertising within ChatGPT. Advertisements characterized such a move as “betrayal”. TV ads position its own Claude chatbot as permanently ad-free.Altman called the campaign “dishonest” and defended his company’s advertising strategy, which is different from what Anthropic portrayed. “We’re not stupid and know our users will reject this… I guess it’s critical theory using a deceptive ad on Anthropic Doublespeak’s brand that isn’t real, but a Super Bowl ad isn’t where I’d expect it to be,” he said in a social media post.
