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New Delhi: Anthropic head Dario Amodei has called India’s AI summit, which the Narendra Modi government had recently cited as an example of why the world should trust the country, “extremely disorganised.”
In an interview with Emily Chang, uploaded on June 17 on YouTube, Altman also spoke of the moment on stage at the New Delhi summit when he and his former colleague at OpenAI, Sam Altman, were forced to be in some proximity. The video gained popularity on June 19 after Congress members began circulating the clip relevant to India.
The relevant part of the interview is here. The following is a transcript.
Emily Chang: There was a moment at India’s AI Summit where you and Sam Altman refused to hold hands on stage. What happened there?
Dario Amodei: What happened is that the summit was extremely disorganised. We all came up at the last minute and they like changed the order in which we were standing and then, like, they took a picture of us and then they ordered us all to, like, hold hands. You know, if you’ve ever been to one of these summits – I am not saying anything bad about India in particular – but like, all of these kinds of international type summits that have, like, heads of state are, like, super disorganised.
Emily Chang: Okay, but everyone else held hands. Come one.
Dario Amodei: I, I, look, I don’t know what to tell you. Okay? There was like, you know, Narendra Modi up there suddenly telling (both Chang and Amodei) everyone to, like, telling everyone to hold hands.
Emily Chang: Alright, alright. Okay look. Sam [Altman] and Elon [Musk] are suing each other. You don’t like Sam…it seems. If the people building the most important technology in the world can’t hold hands on stage, how can we trust you’ll cooperate on existential risk?
Amodei’s note that the summit was disorganised is not news to those who followed or attended it.
In the week before the summit, homeless people residing along Mathura Road were forcefully evicted.
For an event that was about optics and projecting Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a global leader, as Apar Gupta put it, the city and the halls of the Bharat Mandapam seemed starkly unprepared to handle it.
Several speakers noted that they could not make it to events as they were caught in traffic. The Wifi in the venue was inadequate. A Politico report noted, “Inside, signage was poor, crossing the venue could mean multiple security checks, and everyday items like car keys or laptops were occasionally treated as potential hazards.”
Meanwhile, big-ticket speakers like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Microsoft founder Bill Gates pulled out, the latter of his keynote appearance after scrutiny heightened over his past association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The Galgotias University became an instant meme after presenting a China-made robotic dog as the innovation of its own researchers and students.
Amodei’s remark has been shared by several Congress leaders among them Abhishek Singhvi who said on X that the summit was for “Artificial Image Management”.
The BJP’s Amit Malviya claimed that Congress had “conveniently omitted” the Anthropic CEO’s clarification that he was not singling out India in his criticism.
“The India-loathing Congress ecosystem is circulating an edited clip to malign the hugely successful AI Summit held in Delhi,” Malviya said.
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