Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called the India AI Summit “extremely disorganised”.
Congress shared the clip; BJP accused them of using an edited version.
Remark followed Amodei and Sam Altman refusing to hold hands on stage.
Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, described the India AI Summit held in New Delhi earlier this year as “extremely disorganised”, a comment that has triggered a political dispute between the Congress and the BJP.
The remark came during a Bloomberg interview in which Amodei was asked about an awkward moment on stage with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. During a group photograph the two men did not hold hands like the other tech leaders. Amodei had previously served as vice president of research at OpenAI before leaving with his sister and other colleagues to establish Anthropic.
In the interview, Amodei explained the incident: “What happened was that the summit was extremely disorganised. We all came up at the last minute and they changed the order in which we were standing. And then they took a picture of us and they ordered us all to hold hands.”
He added: “If you've ever been to one of these summits, and I'm not saying anything bad about India in particular, but all of these kind of international type summits that have heads of state are super disorganised.”
Amitabh Dubey, research and monitoring in-charge at the All India Congress Committee, shared a clip of the comment on X, highlighting Amodei's criticism of the summit, which was attended by over 100 AI leaders, CEOs and CXOs.
The BJP responded by saying the clip was edited and omitted Amodei's clarification that such disorganisation was common at AI summits worldwide. Amit Malviya, in-charge of the BJP's information and technology department, criticised the Congress for circulating what he called an edited video.
“The India-loathing Congress ecosystem is circulating an edited clip to malign the hugely successful AI Summit held in Delhi,” Malviya said on X. He accused the opposition of trying to “run down India’s achievements”.
“An edited video, stripped of clarification, is enough for them to manufacture outrage and score political points,” Malviya added. He noted that the summit had brought together global leaders, policy makers and industry experts.
“That is what the world saw. Only the Congress ecosystem saw an opportunity to demean India. They won’t get it. For them, every Indian success is a problem to be explained away, diminished, or discredited.”
