In recent years, two companies have risen to prominence in the artificial intelligence world – Anthropic and OpenAI. Both are pursuing cutting-edge AI capabilities, but with very different philosophies and end goals guiding their development. This article will break down the key differences between the two AI powerhouses.
Origins and Leadership
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei, Tom Brown, Chris Olah, Sam McCandlish, Jack Clarke, and Jared Kaplan. Several founders previously worked at OpenAI and Google Brain. Former OpenAI leaders like Dario Amodei aim to take a more safety-focused approach with Anthropic.
OpenAI began in 2015 under Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, Wojciech Zaremba, and backed by elite Silicon Valley investors. Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk was a co-chairman until 2018. OpenAI‘s leadership emphasizes building advanced AI and open-sourcing technologies for the public good.
Philosophy and Values
A core aim of Anthropic is to develop AI that is safe and beneficial for humanity. As former OpenAI leaders, they likely witnessed the immense capabilities but also risks from advancing systems like GPT-3. Anthropic strives for AI that aligns with human values.
OpenAI has a vision of ensuring AI helps humanity. But they take a more neutral stance on advanced systems, neither advocating for or against highly autonomous AI. Their prime goal seems to be unlocking and open-sourcing incredible AI capabilities for researchers.
Technological Approach
Anthropic utilizes a technique called constitutional AI to inherently constrain system behaviors. The system is designed from the ground up to avoid potential harms. Anthropic also leverages reinforcement learning from human feedback to further guide beneficial behaviors.
OpenAI employs reinforcement learning from rewards on massive datasets to achieve remarkable performance. But safety procedures appear bolted on afterwards rather than integrated fully into development. Their focus is more on achieving state-of-the-art metrics at any cost.
Claude vs. GPT-3
Anthropic‘s Claude chatbot platform demonstrates their safety-first approach. While capabilities may not match OpenAI systems, every reply is highly reliable and vetted for potential issues. Usage is limited to partners through their API.
OpenAI‘s GPT-3 showcases cutting-edge generative power but has exhibited bias, toxicity, and falsities at times. Content filtering occurs after the fact. GPT-3 is more widely available through a subscription API targeted at developers.
Commercialization
Anthropic focuses less explicitly on commercialization — Claude‘s capabilities are only available via an API for risk mitigation and control. Their goal seems to be responsible, safe advancement of AI.
OpenAI meanwhile offers services like API access and a waitlist for ChatGPT. In pursuing profits and reach, they provide remarkably capable models with questionable tradeoffs to integrity at times.
The Path Ahead
It‘s too early to determine which approach to AI development — Anthropic‘s safety-oriented caution or OpenAI‘s bold capability expansion — will pay off most in the long run. Both have merits and weaknesses. One thing does seem certain: advanced AI is coming with pros and cons for humanity, whether we are ready or not. Reasonable regulation around access and ethics may help strike the right balance as these systems progress.
