An eventful day at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on February 19 concluded with speeches from eminent personalities such as Sam Altman, Emmanuel Macron, and Sundar Pichai. World leaders expressed optimism about India’s future in the AI race, while several large-scale investments were announced.
In the midst of it all, the nation witnessed what appeared to be an awkward moment between two of the foremost AI trailblazers in the global tech space in the presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Safe to say, the event wrapped up with a bit of drama, and the moment quickly went viral.
Everybody Obliged Except Sam Altman and Dario Amodei! But Why?
Day 4 of the AI Impact Summit concluded with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with global tech leaders including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, posing for a group photograph.
In the clip, they all seemed to be holding hands and raising their fists, except Altman and Amodei, which created a bizarre situation. They seemed to be looking away from each other, and then raised their hands separately.
Thus, it begged the question: was there a cold war going on between the rival AI leaders? For the uninitiated, Altman and Amodei lead competing AI companies, and Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI executives, which included Amodei.
Altman’s OpenAI developed ChatGPT, and Amodei’s Anthropic developed Claude, prompting social media to frame it as a moment of symbolic tension. Ultimately, it remains speculation with no confirmed reason for not holding hands.
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There has been no public comment from Dario Amodei on the hand-holding moment at the AI summit. However, Sam Altman had something to say about the viral moment that had social media abuzz.
It was all just confusing, says Sam Altman
For Sam Altman, it seemed like he wasn’t expecting a hand-holding symbolic moment to mark the AI impact summit, and what resulted was borne out of confusion.
“I was sort of confused, like (Prime Minister) Modi grabbed my hand and put it up, and I just wasn’t sure what we were supposed to be doing,” he told the Indian media outlets present at the summit.
Altman and Amodei were colleagues at OpenAI until 2019. However, due to disagreements with Altman and the board over the company’s direction, Amodei, along with other senior OpenAI researchers, departed from the company in 2020 and subsequently founded Anthropic.
Whether it was bad blood between the two AI leaders that led to that moment, or genuine confusion, remains unclear. Until Amodei offers his take on the issue, no concrete reason can be attributed to that moment of hesitation during the photo-op.
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