First AGI Chronicles Excerpt Reveals Secret Cause of Amodei's OpenAI Exit

More than 150 interviews conducted over one year provide a new look at the rift between the leaders of OpenAI and Anthropic. Journalist Kevin Roose detailed this "central beef" of the AI era in the first excerpt of his book, The AGI Chronicles, published in The Atlantic, exposing a deep personal enmity and mutual distrust between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei over the development of powerful technology.

The account focuses on the 2020 departure of Amodei and 6 colleagues from OpenAI to found Anthropic. Roose identifies a conflict involving Microsoft, Kanye West, and a secret plan to sell artificial general intelligence to Russia and China, which was managed through a Slack channel named BATNA. This lingering personal hatred continues to fuel the current race to achieve AGI, Roose writes.