> I'm not saying a commercial motive is a bad thing - hardly... but this quote seems to be odd given the circumstances.
It only seems odd to you because you are reading much more into it than he's ever said, like "AI should never be commercialized under any circumstances and it is impossible to do so correctly". Then yes, it would be hypocritical. But he didn't say that and never has; and Anthropic thinks they are doing it right.
Also Anthropic, even though it has the same conflict of interest as OpenAI, seems to be addressing safety concerns more earnestly. They are listening to their internal team and innovating in the space (especially in a practical sense, not just future AGI concerns). Massively funding (or at least announcing too) and then ignoring a team is much worse.