Altman and Amodei, who stood side by side, did not hold hands. Instead, they both raised their fists.
NEW DELHI: At the AI Impact Summit on Thursday, there was a “surprise 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 ended up standing next to each other, stopped short of holding hands.Instead, the two AI competitors stood next to each other with their arms crossed — a subtle but noticeable gesture that stood out during the celebratory moment.
AI rivals Altman and Amode ignore each other, making photo shoot for AI Impact Summit in India with PM Modi awkward
The moment Altman and Amodei chose not to collaborate on stage quickly spread across social media platforms. The optics have drawn attention at a time when competition is heating up between OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and Anthropic, which developed Cloud. The two companies vigorously competed to position their models as the AI assistant of choice for users globally, intensifying an already high-stakes battle for global dominance.Altman later explained in a media statement, “I was confused… (Prime Minister) Modi grabbed my hand and raised it, and I wasn’t sure what we were supposed to do.”While the CEOs of the other companies clasped their hands, Amodei and Altman stood uncomfortably, their elbows touching.Altman and Amudi worked together at OpenAI until 2019. Amudi, his sister Daniela, and a group of researchers left the company in 2020 due to disagreements with Altman and the board over the company’s direction, and subsequently founded Anthropic.
Earlier this month, Altman criticized Anthropic after the latter used its Super Bowl campaign to criticize the potential introduction of ads within ChatGPT. Advertisements described such a move as “betrayal.” TV ads positioned its Claude chatbot as permanently ad-free.Altman called the campaign “dishonest” and defended his company’s advertising strategy as being different from what Anthropic portrayed. “We’re not stupid and we know our users will disapprove of this… I think it’s trademark double-anthropy to use a deceptive ad to criticize deceptive theoretical ads that aren’t real, but the Super Bowl ad is not where I expected it to be,” he said in a social media post.
