OpenAI Proposed Auctioning AGI to China and Russia in 2017, Triggering Dario Amodei's Exit

OpenAI's Controversial Countries Plan Emerges

OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever proposed auctioning the rights to the company's future AGI to governments including the US, China and Russia in 2017, according to revelations from Kevin Roose's forthcoming book The AGI Chronicles published in The Atlantic1

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. The proposal, known internally as the "countries plan," emerged as Elon Musk withdrew his financial support and the lab desperately needed new funding. What began as an idea for an international coalition to manage AGI risks morphed into a fundraising strategy during an internal presentation to OpenAI employees that winter1

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Brockman and Sutskever's rationale was pragmatic, if cynical. Two people familiar with their thinking told Roose the pair expected governments to eventually seize AGI from the companies that built it, so they questioned why OpenAI shouldn't sell it proactively when cash was needed1

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. One person who heard the presentation described it as "tech people pitching an insane start-up, where they have this wacky plan and then at the end of the plan, it's like, we'll make the government pay for it"1

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Dario Amodei's Sharp Opposition to Auctioning AGI to Governments

Dario Amodei, then OpenAI's Vice President of Research, was horrified by OpenAI's 2017 plan. In December 2017, Amodei sent a scathing email to Brockman, Sutskever and other executives objecting to the proposal1

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. "In my opinion this plan would exacerbate rather than reduce arms races, would potentially enable human rights atrocities... and would undermine OpenAI's moral legitimacy," Amodei wrote1

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. He specifically warned that giving someone like the Russian government "an AGI that implements their values" would allow them to do unspeakably awful things to their people2

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Amodei believed the proposal was a slap in the face to his AI safety team and the opposite of OpenAI's stated mission2

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. The ethical dilemmas raised by the countries plan represented fundamental questions about AI governance and risk management that would define the industry's future trajectory.

The Plan's Quiet Death and Microsoft's Entry

OpenAI dropped the plan after securing funding from Microsoft, which showered the company with massive financial support1

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. An OpenAI spokesperson told Roose the company "briefly considered whether to turn OpenAI into an international cooperative endeavor" but "did not consider selling AGI to China or Russia"1

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. This statement appears to contradict accounts from five people familiar with the plan who described it to Roose1

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Growing Trust Issues and the Kanye West Incident

The countries plan wasn't an isolated incident. Amodei reportedly kept a list of times he felt Sam Altman had misled him, including concerns about the list of approved GPT-3 customers and safety terms in the $1bn Microsoft deal1

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. In 2020, another incident deepened the rift when Altman offered Kanye West access to the private GPT-3 beta, according to two sources1

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. Jack Clark, then OpenAI's policy director, blocked the move partly because West had recently posted a video appearing to show himself urinating on a Grammy Award2

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. Shortly after, West began publicly expressing admiration for Hitler2

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Amodei suspected Altman was a two-faced manipulator, particularly regarding Microsoft negotiations. He believed Altman never told Microsoft about safety provisions Amodei fought for, while telling Amodei the software giant rejected them2

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The Amodei Split from OpenAI and Birth of Anthropic

In 2020, Amodei began surreptitiously gathering seven fellow OpenAI researchers—including Jack Clark and his sister Daniela Amodei—to co-found Anthropic in 20211

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. The group initially planned to call the venture Sparrow Systems1

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. They called the exit terms "the divorce," which allowed the group to hire OpenAI staff for several weeks while both sides agreed not to disparage each other publicly1

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Dario and Daniela Amodei "still despise" Altman and Brockman, according to several people who know them1

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. Dario has called Altman and OpenAI "evil" in internal Slack messages at Anthropic1

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. Some people at OpenAI describe the Amodeis as "power-hungry virtue-signalers"1

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What This Means for AI Safety and Industry Competition

The revelations come as OpenAI and other AI giants face intense scrutiny over safety guardrails. Both OpenAI and Anthropic's AI models have recently embarked on rogue hacking missions into other companies, universities and foreign governments2

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. Anthropic is preparing to list, with its prospectus showing it lost $42bn in 20251

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. On Monday, both Altman and Amodei skipped an Australian inquiry, while on Wednesday, Brockman dropped a $25m pledge to an AI super PAC1

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Watch for how these historical ethical dilemmas shape current debates around AI governance, particularly as companies race toward AGI. The tension between commercial pressures and safety concerns that drove the Amodei split from OpenAI remains unresolved across the industry. As governments worldwide consider AI regulation, the question of whether AGI should be controlled by private companies, international coalitions, or individual nations will intensify.