"Claude 1 Existed Before ChatGPT": Why Anthropic Chose Not To Release It

Anthropic had an early version of its model Claude 1, even before OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, but the company chose not to release it, CEO Dario Amodei has revealed. Claude 1 was launched in March 2023.

On Nikhil Kamath's podcast ‘WTF Is', Amodei said that releasing a powerful AI prematurely could have pressured other companies to race and launch their own models without proper safety checks.

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"So, back in 2022, we had an early version of Claude, Claude 1. This was before ChatGPT. And we chose not to release this because we were worried that it would kick off an arms race and not give us enough time to build these systems safely," Amodei said.

He described the decision to hold back Claude 1 as a "one-time overhang." He said that Anthropic temporarily had an edge with a powerful AI model but chose not to release it immediately.

"We could see the power of the models, and a couple of other companies could see the power of the models. And so we decided not to do that. And that's public; that's well documented," he said.

Instead of rushing it out, they decided to wait to avoid starting a global AI arms race. Later, when OpenAI released its model, the competition officially began. "And then we waited, someone else did, and then we were like, 'Okay, the arms race has kicked off.' So now we can release our model, but probably the world gained a few months," he said.

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Amodei said that waiting to release Claude 1 was very expensive for Anthropic. Because they delayed, they probably lost the lead in the consumer AI market to other companies that released models first. "Now, that was very commercially expensive. We probably ceded the lead on consumer AI because of that," he added.

He also mentioned that Anthropic has spoken out about chip policies and AI regulations, even when this upset some of the competing companies that supply them or disagreed with government policies.

"We've advocated on chip policy in ways that have made some of the chip companies that are our suppliers very angry at us, voicing our disagreement with the administration's on AI policy and AI regulations in some matters," Amodei said.