AI's biggest rivalry has only gotten more public this year. Ever since Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei left OpenAI in December 2020, the two startups have found themselves at loggerheads. Amodei's feud with OpenAI Sam Altman has now expanded far beyond his icy relationship with his onetime colleague.Now, the staff for two of the world's largest AI companies is joining the fray."Should a loving ensouled machine God watch over humanity? Vote Anthropic," OpenAI's chief futurist Joshua Achiam recently wrote on X. "Should humanity be entrusted with the tools of its own progress and destiny? Vote OpenAI."As their rivalry marches toward Wall Street and highly anticipated IPOs, it's a good time to catch up on how Altman and Amodei went from colleagues to the face of AI's cold war.
July 2015: Decisions happened over dinner
Elon Musk and Sam Altman are seen on stage together in 2015. While the pair later had their own falling-out, both were instrumental in the creation of OpenAI.
Michael Kovac/Getty Images
In July 2015, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Altman, and a group of elite AI researchers all gathered at the swanky Rosewood Hotel in Menlo Park, California.According to The New York Times, Musk had a falling out with then-Google CEO Larry Page. Weeks later, Musk, Altman, Amodei, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and others discussed the formation of a new AI lab to ensure Google had a worthy competitor in the AI space. Musk invited Amodei, per tech journalist Alex Kantrowitz.Their vision became OpenAI, though Amodei initially elected not to join the startup research lab. Roughly a year later, he changed his mind and joined OpenAI as "Team Lead for AI Safety."
