The feud between Dario Amodei and his former boss Sam Altman goes back to 2016, a report has claimed. The two executives have recently engaged in a public exchange of criticism, which follows weeks of friction between Anthropic and the Department of War regarding policy restrictions on military AI applications.Citing interviews with current and former employees at both companies and people close to the leaders, The Wall Street Journal reported that the rift between the leaders of Anthropic and OpenAI started in group house on Delano Avenue, San Francisco a decade ago.
How feud between Dario Amodei and Sam Altman started
Dario lived in that house with his sister Daniela. OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, a friend of Daniela’s, began hanging around the house. The group talked about AI technology with one disagreement.
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While Brockman argued that if AI was going to change everyone’s lives, the public deserved to know, Amodei said sensitive developments should be shared with governments first.The report said that both disagreed on multiple issues, leading to clash with Brockman over research direction and credit. He believed Altman made promises he did not keep. Things went sour for years since Dario joined OpenAI in 2016, and in early 2020 Altman accused Dario and Daniela of encouraging colleagues to send negative feedback about him to the board. The WSJ also says that when Daniela summoned the executive Altman cited as his source into the room, that executive denied saying anything of the sort. Altman then denied having said it himself — prompting both Amodeis to begin shouting at him. By the end of 2020, Dario, Daniela, and nearly a dozen colleagues had left to found Anthropic.
The ‘war’ goes public
One of the recent examples is when Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought together the world’s top AI leaders in New Delhi earlier this year, the assembled executives joined hands and raised them above their heads for a closing photograph. Dario Amodei and Sam Altman opted out and awkwardly touched elbows instead.Amodei has also criticised OpenAI’s recent contract with the US Defense Department, describing it as a ‘safety threat, according to a report by The Information. Altman, as per CNBC, asked the Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to get his facts right.The WSJ report said that in private communications with colleagues, Amodei has compared the legal battle between Altman and Elon Musk to a fight between Hitler and Stalin, called a $25 million OpenAI donation to a pro-Trump PAC “evil,” and likened OpenAI to a tobacco company knowingly selling a harmful product.When Anthropic was barred from Pentagon work and responded by suing the Trump administration, Altman quickly filled the void by announcing a classified Defence Department contract. Amodei fired back on Slack, calling OpenAI “mendacious” and saying the move reflected “a pattern of behavior that I’ve seen often from Sam Altman.”
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