Kevin Roose's 'The AGI Chronicles' excerpt in The Atlantic: the Altman–Amodei feud and a 2017 Brockman/Sutskever plan to auction OpenAI's AGI to countries
On Sept 30, 2026 The Atlantic published an excerpt from Kevin Roose's book "The AGI Chronicles: The Inside Story of the Race to Create an Artificial Superintelligence" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, on sale Oct 6, 2026). The excerpt covers the OpenAI–Anthropic rivalry and the personal feud between Sam Altman and Dario Amodei. It reports that in 2017 Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever drew up a plan to auction the rights to OpenAI's future AGI to countries.
Key facts
- Author: Kevin Roose (New York Times tech columnist, co-host of Hard Fork); publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux; on sale Oct 6, 2026
- Based on 150+ interviews at OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind plus unpublished company documents and research memos (publisher)
- Reported 2017 plan by OpenAI co-founders Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever to auction rights to OpenAI's future AGI to countries
- Roose describes 'a spider's web of tangled animosities': Hassabis cannot stand Altman, Amodei and Altman cannot stand each other, Altman cannot stand Musk (as summarized by AI Weekly)
- The book also has new detail on why Anthropic's founders left OpenAI and on Altman's 2023 firing and reinstatement (publisher description)
What happened
The Atlantic ran a long excerpt from Roose's book, out on Oct 6, about the rivalry between OpenAI and Anthropic. The headline revelation is a 2017 plan by Brockman and Sutskever to auction rights to OpenAI's future AGI to national governments.
Why it matters
The excerpt gives sourced detail on rivalries and governance improvisation among lab leaders that had mostly been rumor. It comes as both labs prepare for, or talk about, public listings.
Unverified: this run could not read The Atlantic article directly (blocked), so the details come from the Techmeme headline, AI Weekly's summary and the publisher's description. The exact wording and sourcing of the auction plan should be checked against the book.
Changelog
- 2026-09-30: created (quick run on Techmeme Sept 30)
Related events
- Reuters obtains Anthropic's IPO prospectus: $2T+ target valuation, $4.6B 2025 revenue, 80 pages of risk factors incl. existential risk ★★★★
- Altman: no OpenAI IPO until it can make 'confident safety claims', but waiting too long would be 'bad for the world' ★★★
Sources (5)
- pressThe Atlantic: OpenAI v. Anthropic, inside the biggest rivalry in tech (book excerpt)
- officialMacmillan: The AGI Chronicles (publisher page)
- officialThe AGI Chronicles: book website
- pressAI Weekly: Roose excerpt on the Altman–Amodei feud and the 2017 plan to auction AGI
- discussionTechmeme: discussion of the excerpt
id: 2026-09-30-roose-agi-chronicles-atlantic-excerpt · updated 2026-09-30 · open in the interactive timeline