Fresh papers from court say that when Sam Altman got kicked out as OpenAI’s main guy in 2023 for a bit, the group thought about joining up with Anthropic, a rival. This odd bit showed up when Ilya Sutskever, who helped start OpenAI and used to be its top brain, spoke in court for Elon Musk’s case against OpenAI and Altman.
Sutskever said that the big bosses at Anthropic, like Dario and Daniela Amodei, chatted with OpenAI’s board about joining forces, which would have put Anthropic in charge.
Sutskever said he really didn’t like this idea and felt bad about it, but other board people seemed okay with it. He said Helen Toner liked the plan the most. But the talks stopped fast after Anthropic brought up some real problems that killed the deal.
This short chat happened when things were messy after Altman was fired but before he got his CEO job back just days later.
This news makes the fight between Elon Musk and Sam Altman even weirder, both in court and in person. Musk says OpenAI dumped its first goal to help people and now cares only about money with Microsoft’s help. OpenAI fought back by suing Musk, saying he’s been bugging the firm for ages.
They squabble online, making fun of each other. The talk about joining up shows how shaky OpenAI’s leaders were then and proves how tough fights and bad blood shape the fast world of AI.
