Sam Altman makes fun of Anthropic’s ad campaign asking people 'hard question on AI'
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly criticized Anthropic's new advertising campaign, which invites the public to share concerns about AI. Altman dismissed the initiative as performative, questioning the company's sincerity regarding transparency.
Why it matters
This public spat highlights the intense competition and ideological differences between leading AI labs regarding safety and public engagement.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has mocked rival Anthropic's new advertising campaign that asks people to share their concerns about AI. Anthropic launched the campaign under the theme "There's hope in hard questions," encouraging people to ask difficult questions about AI's impact on jobs, families, science and society. The Claude maker said it wants to better understand public concerns and will publicly track the steps it takes to address them. However, Sam Altman responded with a series of sarcastic posts on X (formerly Twitter), saying he initially thought the campaign was a parody."i thought this was satire, kept looking for the handle to be spelled c1audeai or something," Altman wrote in reply to Anthropic's post on X.Continuing his criticism of the campaign, Altman wrote in another post."hard questions are great but only if we deem you worthy enough to not silently downgrade you, or even get access at all"Anthropic AI campaign asks public to share 'hard questions' about AIAnthropic said AI has the potential to improve people's lives by making work easier, speeding up scientific research and helping solve major medical and social challenges. At the same time, it acknowledged concerns about job losses, creative work, human agency and the misuse of AI. The company said it is launching a new initiative to better understand these concerns and has invited people to submit their toughest questions about AI.According to Anthropic, it has already surveyed 52,000 Americans about their hopes and concerns around AI, collected responses from 81,000 Claude users across 159 countries and 70 languages, conducted in-person focus groups and studied anonymised real-world Claude usage data.The company said it will publicly report the actions it takes to address these questions and be transparent about where it falls short of its goals.Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.
The article provides a balanced account of Anthropic's campaign and Altman's critical response.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in