Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei and husband used stuffed-animal advisory council for workplace conflicts: report

Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei used stuffed animals to work through office problems, giving them names and personalities for “managerial role-playing,” according to a report.The sister of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and her husband Holden Karnofsky used the toys as a “personal advisory council,” according to the piece published Wednesday in The Atlantic.The bizarre practice predated Anthropic’s launch and took place while the power couple was still at OpenAI, according to the article, which was adapted from journo Kevin Roose’s forthcoming “The AGI Chronicles: The Inside Story of the Race to Create an Artificial Superintelligence.”The off-color antics surfaced as Anthropic was headed to a possible $2 trillion IPO and as the Federal Trade Commission ramped up a sweeping probe of Anthropic, OpenAI and other frontier labs, as The Post reported.Daniela Amodei and Karnofsky’s stuffed animals had “character profiles,” according to the article in The Atlantic.Jinji was described as “a lazy cat who encouraged Daniela to cancel meetings and avoid taking on too much work.” Pink bear Maura was “a detail-­oriented, type-­A manager.”A panda dubbed Beary Bonds served as the “patron bear of generosity and empathy” — a possible nod to the geeks’ ties to the controversial effective-altruism movement.For Amodei, the exercise appeared to mix humor with a serious attempt to think through management problems.The stuffed animals were “very useful in analyzing different personality types,” she told Roose in 2023.Few OpenAI employees knew about the unconventional advisory council — and those who did were unsure how seriously Amodei took its recommendations, according to the report.The stuffed animal sessions came during a time Amodei, who joined OpenAI in 2018, and her bro were growing frustrated with the company’s leadership and internal culture.Daniela, who studied English literature before moving into tech, was seen by some OpenAI empl...