- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Anthropic is using "fear-based marketing" to sell Claude Mythos.
- Anthropic said it would not release Claude Mythos publicly due to its cybersecurity capabilities.
- Altman said, without naming names, that some in tech want to keep AI in the hands of a few people.
Sam Altman accused Anthropic of trying to use "fear-based marketing" to sell Claude Mythos, its new AI model.
"It is clearly incredible marketing to say, 'We have built a bomb. We were about to drop it on your head. We will sell you a bomb shelter for $100 million to run across all your stuff, but only if we pick you as a customer,'" Altman told podcaster Ashlee Vance in an episode of Vance's "Core Memory" podcast posted on Tuesday.
Some in tech have questioned Anthropic's decision to both withhold a public release of Claude Mythos, instead allowing only a few select companies to get a peek behind the curtain.
"There are people in the world who, for a long time, have wanted to keep AI in the hands of a smaller group of people," Altman said. "You could justify that in a lot of different ways, and some of it's real — like there are going to be legitimate safety concerns. But if what you want is like, 'We need control of AI, just us, because we're the trustworthy people, I think the fear-based marketing is probably the most effective way to justify that."
In contrast, Altman said he has confidence in OpenAI's policies and safeguards. He said there will be "very dangerous models that will have to be released in different ways," but that OpenAI will err on the side of larger releases.
"The goal here is to benefit everybody and also to, I don't say market this in a way — but like get the world to come on this journey with us, and to say, 'We are going to give you more powerful technology, there's going to be responsibility that goes along with that,'" he said. "We are going to try to help set up the world for as much success as we can."
Anthropic said earlier this month that it would not release Claude Mythos due to concerns that it was too adept at identifying cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Instead, Anthropic created "Project Glasswing," through which only 11 organizations, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, and JPMorgan Chase, were given access to the model.
Elsewhere in the interview, Altman suggested Anthropic is partly to blame for the attack on his home. The OpenAI CEO's statements are sure to stoke an already bitter rivalry between Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who left OpenAI to found one of its biggest competitors.
"I think the doomerism talk hasn't helped. I think the way certain other labs talk about us hasn't helped," Altman said, adding, "I think the way Anthropic talks about OpenAI doesn't help."
