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, systematically revealing for the first time, through extensive interviews with current and former employees and executives of the two companies, the decade-long personal feud between the founders of Anthropic and OpenAI. What shapes the global AI landscape is not only the dispute over technological paths but also a never-healed personal trauma.

In recent months, Dario Amodei's internal rhetoric has been much harsher than in public. He compared the legal dispute between Sam Altman and Elon Musk to "the fight between Hitler and Stalin," called OpenAI president Greg Brockman's donation of $25 million 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 also referred to OpenAI as "hypocritical" on Slack, writing, "These facts indicate a behavioral pattern I often see in Sam Altman."

Internally, Anthropic refers to this branding strategy as creating a "healthy alternative" to competitors. During this year's Super Bowl, an advertisement that subtly mocked OpenAI for embedding ads in chatbots was a product of this public strategy.

The story begins in the living room of a shared house on Delano Street in San Francisco in 2016. Dario lived here with his sister Daniela Amodei, and OpenAI co-founder Brockman often visited due to his close friendship with Daniela. One day, Brockman, Dario, and Daniela's then-fiancé, effective altruism philanthropist Holden Karnofsky, sat down to debate the correct development path for AI: Brockman believed all Americans should be informed about what is happening at the forefront of AI, while Dario and Karnofsky believed that sensitive information should be reported to the government first rather than broadcast to the public. This disagreement later became a philosophical divide between the two companies.

Moved by OpenAI's talent pool, Dario joined in mid-2016 and stayed up late with Brockman to train AI agents to play video games. However, after four years of collaboration, conflicts surrounding power and a sense of belonging deepened. In 2017, when major OpenAI backer Musk demanded a list of each employee's contributions for job cuts, about 10% to 20% of the 60-person team was laid off one by one, which Dario viewed as cruel; among those laid off was someone who later became a co-founder of Anthropic.

In the same year, an ethics advisor hired by Dario suggested that OpenAI act as a coordinating entity between AI companies and the government. Brockman extrapolated this into the idea of "selling AGI to the nuclear powers on the United Nations Security Council," which Dario considered tantamount to treason and briefly contemplated resigning.

After Musk's exit in 2018, Altman took over leadership. He and Dario reached a consensus: employees lacked confidence in the leadership of Brockman and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. Dario agreed to stay under the condition that the two no longer supervised him but soon discovered that Altman had simultaneously promised the latter two that they had the right to fire him, a contradiction between the two promises.

After the launch of the GPT series development, the executive level experienced the most intense conflict over who could participate in the language model project. As the research director at the time, Dario did not allow Brockman to interfere, and Daniela, who co-led the project with Alec Radford, threatened to resign from the lead position. Radford's personal wishes became embroiled in the executive proxy war.

Dario's credentials soared with the success of GPT-2 and GPT-3, but he felt that Altman downplayed his contributions. When Brockman discussed OpenAI's charter on a podcast, Dario was angry for not being invited despite contributing more to the charter; he was similarly displeased to learn that Brockman and Altman were meeting with former President Obama while excluding him.

The conflict escalated drastically during a confrontation in a meeting room. Altman called the Amodei siblings into the room and accused 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; the executive said he was completely unaware.

Altman then denied having said that, and a heated argument ensued. In early 2020, Altman asked executives to write peer reviews, and Brockman wrote a stern feedback accusing Daniela of abusing power and using bureaucratic processes to eliminate dissenters; Altman reviewed it beforehand, describing it as "tough but fair." Daniela rebutted each point, and the argument escalated to the point where Brockman proposed retracting his comments.

By the end of 2020, a team centered around Dario decided to leave, with Daniela leading negotiations with lawyers for their departure. Altman personally visited Dario's home to persuade him to stay, and Dario stated he would only accept reporting directly to the board and clearly expressed that he could not work with Brockman. Before leaving, he wrote a long memo categorizing AI companies into "market-oriented" and "public interest-oriented," arguing that the ideal ratio was 75% public interest 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 and are competing to go public. In February of this year, when the New Delhi AI summit concluded with a group photo, Indian Prime Minister Modi and attending tech leaders raised their hands together, while Amodei and Altman chose not to participate, merely awkwardly bumping elbows.

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