Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Dario Amodei (Anthropic) Refuse to Hold Hands

I for one refuse to be thrilled by the shallow affairs of ephemeral celebs

Why being childish is bad, but following arbitrary conventions is good?

Lots of bad blood and betrayal between them.

Isn’t the origin story of Anthropic basically a bunch of disillusioned OpenAI employees fucking off and starting over?

Like Runic Games when Blizzard first started turning into assholes.

In this case its about showing good judgement. Good judgement is putting the unity of the group above your own petty rivalries, when all the group is asking you to do is hold hands for a photo.

If he holds hands for the photo, it is not going to materially change whether OpenAI outperforms Anthropic or vice versa, but what it shows is a certain level of maturity - Im mature enough to understand the situation here is the projection of ultimate unity, of a greater mission that humanity is all here together, even though our system puts us in competition with each other, and for a moment, I will show that (just like everyone else standing here) I can rise above it, and hold hands for a photo.

It's not a big ask in a physical sense, but its an appeal to the wisdom that ultimately we are all on the same team together on this little floating rock, and maybe, just maybe, for a tiny second, it would be good to acknowledge that.