Book excerpt exposes Altman‑Amodei feud and Brockman, Sutskever’s 2017 plan to auction OpenAI’s future AGI to countries
openai
| Source: Techmeme | Original article
A new book excerpt reveals the ongoing feud between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei and discloses that Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever had a 2017 plan to auction future OpenAI AGI rights to nations.
A new excerpt from Kevin Roose’s forthcoming book *The AGI Chronicles* reveals two previously unreported chapters in OpenAI’s history. The Atlantic piece traces a long‑running feud between Sam Altman and former OpenAI researcher Dario Amodei back to their overlapping tenures at the lab, and discloses that co‑founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever once drafted a plan, in 2017, to auction the rights to any future artificial general intelligence (AGI) developed by OpenAI to nation‑states.
The revelation adds depth to the public perception of internal discord at the company that now dominates the frontier of generative AI. While Altman has recently argued that OpenAI will not pursue an IPO until it can make “confident safety claims” about its models, the disclosed plan suggests that early leadership entertained a very different vision of how AGI could be commercialised and controlled. If such an auction had proceeded, it could have placed the most powerful AI technology under direct governmental ownership, raising profound questions about geopolitical balance, export controls and the ethics of weaponising intelligence.
The excerpt also frames the Altman‑Amodei rivalry as a personal and strategic clash that has spilled into public commentary, with Amodei’s recent remarks likening the dispute to a “Hitler vs. Stalin” standoff. The resurfacing of these internal debates may prompt renewed scrutiny from regulators and policymakers, especially as governments worldwide consider oversight mechanisms for advanced AI.
What to watch next: statements from OpenAI’s current leadership on the historical plan, reactions from the U.S. and foreign officials about the prospect of state‑owned AGI, and the full release of Roose’s book, which promises further insight into the power struggles that have shaped the AI industry’s trajectory.
Sources
Back to AIPULSEN