Two of the leading AI companies, Open AI and Anthropic AI have different products, different missions, and different areas of research. This article focuses on the key differences between these two companies.
2023 was the year for artificial intelligence with numerous new startups entering the industry. Artificial intelligence, more commonly known as AI, has a huge potential to transform essential domains such as healthcare, education, and entertainment in the world today. Two of the most prominent AI companies are Open AI with its highly known product, ChatGPT, and Anthropic AI with its product Claude 2.1. The question is, what are the differences between the products of these two companies in this ongoing AI race?
Anthropic AI, established in 2021 in San Francisco, is an emerging AI company founded by individuals formerly working in OpenAI, Dario and Daniela Amode. The vision of the company is to develop AI systems considering human preferences and to integrate machine learning research with safety engineering and testing methodologies, primarily with their newest platform, Claude 2.1.
Logo of Anthropic AI
On the other hand, Open AI is another well-known AI company founded much earlier than Anthropic AI in 2015 by a group of famous researchers such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Sam Altman. The company’s mission is to guarantee that AI can perform any intellectual tasks that a human being can easily do to its best capability. Even though these two leading companies pursue similar goals of creating safe and beneficial AI systems for human life, they differ in several key aspects; their missions, structures, areas of research, and products.
Logo of Open AI
In terms of the companies’ missions, both companies aim to produce AI-based platforms that will replace the jobs of human beings. Nevertheless, Anthropic AI doesn’t specifically target the achievements of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), which are primarily the focus areas of Open AI. By that means, the focus of Anthropic AI is on creating dependable and trustworthy AI systems that can be utilized through several different tasks. Open AI, in contrast, focuses on developing AGI and ASI and strives for widespread access and AI collaboration.
Another difference between these two companies is their structures since both companies adopt diverse legal structures and models of governance. Anthropic AI, operating as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), blends profit motives with a social purpose and is unrestricted by shareholder limitations which allows the pursuit of its distinctive vision. Open AI, however, contains two entities, a nonprofit corporation (OpenAI Inc.) and a for-profit corporation (OpenAI LP). Its nonprofit company mostly conducts research held in the platform whereas the for-profit company works for the advertisement and commercialization of the products.
The third difference can be considered the biggest difference between the two companies as they conduct numerous trials of research to produce substitutable products. Both companies do their research based on machine learning but they have different focus areas and outputs. Anthropic AI aims to produce generative models that can develop new data and content such as texts, audio, images, and videos. The company’s essential product Claude is specifically designed with this aim, as it is an extensive language model capable of receiving instructions to assist users across their daily tasks like writing, coding, maths, and reasoning. Open AI’s research, on the other hand, revolves around developing powerful and expansible AI systems that are capable of attaining performance levels equivalent to or surpassing human capabilities across diverse tasks through the areas of reinforcement learning, robotics, meta-learning, and safety engineering. Its essential product is ChatGPT, which can be defined as a chatbot that can respond to human questions by blending written content across the Internet, including articles, social media posts, essays, codes, and emails.
The differences and similarities between these two prominent AI companies aren’t limited to the ones that are mentioned. To become the leading AI platforms in the world, both companies work and compete rigorously, and they have different perspectives on how to achieve their goals by benefitting society. Here comes the question, will these AI-based platforms be able to capture our world and hypnotize every one of us with their highly intriguing features?
Works Cited
Rafieyan, Darius. "If you get sued for an AI-generated creative work,
OpenAIsays it will protect you while Anthropic says you're on your own." Business Insider, 15 Nov. 2023. Accessed 12 Dec. 2023.
Spencer, Michael. "OpenAI vs. Anthropic is the Key 2023 Startup Battle to Watch in Generative A.I." AI Supremacy, 24 May 2023. Accessed 12 Dec. 2023.