A book excerpt details the Sam Altman-Dario Amodei feud, and Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever's 2017 plan to auction rights to OpenAI's future AGI to countries

The plan to auction AGI rights to countries, had it been executed, would have fundamentally altered the geopolitical landscape of AI development.

A recent book excerpt has revealed details about a significant feud between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. The excerpt also details a 2017 plan conceived by Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever, then key figures at OpenAI. Their proposal was to auction the rights to future Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) to various countries. This plan aimed to ensure that AGI development and control would be distributed globally rather than concentrated in the hands of a few entities.

The unearthing of this 2017 AGI rights auction plan by Brockman and Sutskever suggests an early, ambitious vision for global AI governance at OpenAI. It indicates a recognition, even at that nascent stage, of the immense power and potential societal impact of AGI, and a desire to preemptively distribute that power. This contrasts sharply with the current intense competition and consolidation seen among major AI labs, highlighting how the strategic landscape has evolved dramatically.

The ongoing conflict between Altman and Amodei, framed within this historical context, underscores the high stakes of the AI race. Their feud represents a clash of differing philosophies on AI development and deployment – perhaps one prioritizing rapid advancement and commercialization, the other focusing on safety and decentralized control, influenced by their past experiences. The revelations offer a rare glimpse into the foundational strategic thinking and internal tensions that have shaped, and continue to shape, the trajectory of leading AI organizations.