The great hate race

Everyone needs a nemesis

I’m just over halfway through a book about the rise of AI¹, which is far enough to know I’ll finish it. True to all good tech tales, it’s as much about the people as the technology. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman sits in one corner versus Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei in the other.

And guess what? Sam and Dario hate each other.

Hate’s a strong word, and I use it a lot in this piece, but not flippantly. Not a hater. In my personal life I dislike no one, let alone hate anyone. But in my work life there have been more than a few people I hated with a capital H.

But first: Sam and Dario.

Dario came to OpenAI from Google Brain, where he was an AI researcher. A fervent advocate for safe AGI, Dario initially led OpenAI’s safety team before he moved up to run research. Sam’s partnership with Microsoft and subsequent push to commercialize ChatGPT ran against what Dario believed he signed up for. He came to deeply distrust Sam and OpenAI’s direction, leaving in 2021 with a big chunk of his research team to found Anthropic.

OpenAI and Anthropic are both headed for IPOs this year with ridiculous valuations. We’ll be debating the merits of these two companies and their tech for a long time.

While Sam and Dario are the tech rivalry playing out today, they’re far from the first. Take Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Remember the Mac vs. PC commercials? OpenAI and Anthropic took shots at each other over Super Bowl ads with Anthropic needling OpenAI on their announcement to start placing ads.

But this story isn’t about AI, it’s about how the power of hate fuels the biggest rivalries and the biggest companies and how hate also drives progress within companies.

And it’s not just tech. How about Edison vs. Westinghouse in the War of the Currents. Or Ford vs. Sloan for the future of the automobile industry.

Why are corporate rivalries such a great source of inspiration?

I have some theories.

You pick your friends but you don’t necessarily pick who you work with. Work brings out the worst in people, and the higher you climb, the worse they get. The very fabric of capitalism nurtures this behavior. We dismantle monopolies — it’s all about competition.

Pressure turns coal into diamonds? Not at work it doesn’t; pressure turns annoying people into @$$holes.

If your friend had a rough year, would you put them on a performance plan? If they didn’t quite get everything done you had planned together a year earlier would you put a “does not meet” sticker on their forehead? These people are not your friends.

Once you realize that, don’t sit with it, use it.

Hate has gotten me out of some crummy jobs. Once at a boutique consulting company, my boss — the guy who ran it — was a narcissistic, corrupt tool and his toxic culture pervaded the whole place. Learned some stuff and then I got the eff out.

I hate a lackey. I’ve had a few co-workers that had their head so far up the boss’s @$$ they could feed them breakfast. Add on passive aggressive behavior where they don’t miss an opportunity to take you or your team down a notch. Those guys motivated me to flat out be better than them.

Toward the end of my corporate career there was one guy that was all the worst things. He came over to work for me with a chip on his shoulder because he thought he shoulda been the boss. Insipid, shallow, thin-skinned, self-serving. Man that guy got me going.

Eventually we became peers and you can bet I beat his numbers every single year.

What’s Superman without Lex Luthor? Batman without the Joker? Spider-Man without the Green Goblin?

Now I work for myself. I have no rivals. I only take clients I like. It’s chill not having anyone to hate.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t say hate fueled some of my success. Hate isn’t great, but when it shows up, you might as well put it to work.

Respect the nemesis.

1. Empire of AI by Karen Hao