During the inaugural session of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) Summit on Dec. 12, 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei did not join a hand-raising gesture for unity initiated by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The moment occurred on stage at the Bharat Mandapam convention center in New Delhi, where global technology leaders had gathered to discuss the future of artificial intelligence.
In his opening address, Prime Minister Modi spoke about international collaboration on AI development. Toward the conclusion of his remarks, he invited the speakers seated on stage with him to join hands and raise them together. Video footage and photographs from the event show that while most dignitaries participated, including Microsoft Vice Chair Brad Smith and Google DeepMind Vice President of Research Slav Petrov, Altman and Amodei remained seated with their hands apart.
The GPAI Summit, hosted by India, brought together representatives from 29 member nations, industry experts, and academics. The event’s stated goal was to foster international cooperation on the responsible and human-centric development of artificial intelligence. Prime Minister Modi, in his speech, called for a global framework for the ethical use of AI.
OpenAI, the developer of the large language model ChatGPT, and Anthropic, which created the AI model Claude, are prominent firms and competitors in the field of generative artificial intelligence. Amodei is a former vice president of research at OpenAI who left the company in 2021 to co-found Anthropic.
The on-stage group included several other key figures from the technology industry, such as Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta, and Martin Fleming, Chief Economist at IBM. Representatives for OpenAI, Anthropic, and the Prime Minister’s Office have not issued public statements regarding the specific moment.
The three-day summit concluded with the adoption of the New Delhi Declaration, a joint statement in which GPAI members agreed to advance safe, secure, and trustworthy AI. The declaration also committed to supporting AI innovation and ensuring equitable access to its benefits, particularly for economies in the Global South.
