OpenAI's Shadowy Past: Country Partnerships and Kanye Access

In 2017, OpenAI's co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever proposed an internal plan to fund artificial general intelligence (AGI) research by partnering with nation-states. The 'countries plan' suggested auctioning off AGI rights or taking money from governments in the US, China, and Russia.

Dario Amodei, a senior researcher at OpenAI, strongly objected to the plan, calling it 'morally illegitimate.' He argued that such an arrangement could intensify arms races between rival powers and enable human rights abuses.

The same year, Sam Altman reportedly offered Kanye West early access to GPT-3, but the offer was shut down due to concerns about West's unpredictable behavior.

The proposals were part of a broader pattern of friction within OpenAI, including disagreements over governance and commercialization. This led to Amodei and several colleagues eventually leaving to found Anthropic in 2021.