Original Title: "The Decadelong Feud Shaping the Future of AI"

Original Author: Keach Hagey

Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey published a lengthy investigative report that systematically reveals, for the first time, the personal feud lasting ten years between the founders of Anthropic and OpenAI through extensive interviews with current and former employees and executives of both companies. The shaping of the global AI landscape is influenced not only by technological disputes but also by a lingering personal trauma.

In recent months, Dario Amodei's internal rhetoric has been much more intense than in public. He compared the legal dispute between Sam Altman and Elon Musk to "Hitler's feud with Stalin," called OpenAI President Greg Brockman's $25 million donation to a pro-Trump super PAC "evil," and likened OpenAI and other competitors to "tobacco companies that knowingly sell harmful products."

After the Pentagon dispute escalated, he referred to OpenAI as "hypocritical" on Slack, writing, "These facts indicate a pattern of behavior I have often seen in Sam Altman."

Internally, Anthropic refers to this branding strategy as the creation of a "healthy alternative" to competitors, and during this year's Super Bowl, an unnamed advertisement that sarcastically criticized OpenAI for embedding ads in its chatbot was a product of this public approach.

The story begins in the living room of a shared house on Delano Street in San Francisco in 2016. Dario and his sister Daniela Amodei lived there, and OpenAI co-founder Brockman frequently visited due to his personal relationship with Daniela. One day, Brockman, Dario, and Daniela's then-fiancé, effective altruism philanthropist Holden Karnofsky, sat together debating the correct development path for AI: Brockman believed all Americans should be informed about what was happening at the forefront of AI, while Dario and Karnofsky thought sensitive information should first be reported to the government rather than broadcast to the public. This disagreement would later become a philosophical watershed for both companies.

Moved by OpenAI's talent pool, Dario joined in mid-2016 and worked late with Brockman to train AI agents to play video games. However, after four years of working together, tensions around power and belonging deepened. In 2017, when the main investor Musk demanded a list of employee contributions for layoffs, about 10% to 20% of the 60-person team was laid off one by one. Dario saw this as cruel, and one of those dismissed later became a co-founder of Anthropic.

That same year, an ethics advisor hired by Dario suggested that OpenAI act as a coordinating entity for AI companies and the government. Brockman extended this to a notion of "selling AGI to the UN Security Council nuclear powers," which Dario considered almost treasonous and briefly contemplated resigning.

After Musk's departure in 2018, Altman took over leadership. He and Dario reached a consensus: employees lacked confidence in Brockman and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever's leadership. Dario decided to stay on the condition that the two no longer had authority over him but soon discovered that Altman had promised the two that they had the right to fire him, creating conflicting commitments.

After the start of the GPT series development, the executive team erupted into the most intense conflict over who could participate in the language model project. Dario, then the director of research, did not allow Brockman to interfere, and Daniela, who co-led the project with Alec Radford, threatened to resign as head. Radford's personal willingness became entangled in the power struggle among executives.

Dario's qualifications rose with the success of GPT-2 and GPT-3, yet he felt Altman downplayed his contributions. When Brockman discussed OpenAI's bylaws on a podcast, Dario was furious about not being invited despite contributing significantly; he was equally displeased to learn that Brockman and Altman were meeting former President Obama while excluding him.

The tension culminated in a standoff in a conference room. Altman called the Amodei siblings into the room, accusing them of inciting colleagues to submit negative feedback about him to the board. The two denied it. Altman claimed the information came from another executive, and Daniela called that executive in to confront him, who stated he was completely unaware of it.

Altman immediately denied having said that, leading to a heated argument. In early 2020, Altman requested executives to write peer reviews, and Brockman crafted a strongly worded review accusing Daniela of abusing power and using bureaucratic processes to eliminate dissent, which Altman reviewed beforehand, assessing it as "tough but fair." Daniela countered point by point, leading to an escalation where Brockman even suggested retracting his comments.

By the end of 2020, a team centered around Dario decided to leave, with Daniela leading negotiations with lawyers regarding their departures. Altman personally visited Dario's home to persuade him to stay, but Dario insisted on reporting directly to the board and made it clear he could not work with Brockman. Before leaving, he wrote a lengthy memo categorizing AI companies into "market-oriented" and "public benefit-oriented" types, arguing that the ideal ratio should be 75% public benefit and 25% market. Weeks later, Dario, Daniela, and nearly twelve employees left OpenAI to establish Anthropic.

Five years later, both companies are valued at over $300 billion, competing for an IPO. In February, during the closing group photo at the AI summit in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Modi and the attending tech leaders raised their hands, while Amodei and Altman chose not to participate, merely awkwardly bumping elbows.

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