OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed an “agreement” with the Department of Defense (DOD) on Friday to deploy the company’s models in the department’s “classified network.”
This comes after President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to start phasing out the use of Anthropic’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Why It Matters
A more comprehensive debate on the role of AI in national security composes the core of the clash, including concerns over using it during instances of lethal force and pertaining to sensitive government data and surveillance.
On Friday, Trump ripped into Anthropic in a post to Truth Social, saying in part: “The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution. Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY.”
What To Know
In the lengthy post on X, Altman said, “Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network. In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome. AI safety and wide distribution of benefits are the core of our mission. Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems.
“The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement. We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they should, which the DoW also wanted. We will deploy FDEs [Forward Deployed Engineers] to help with our models and to ensure their safety, we will deploy on cloud networks only.
“We are asking the DoW to offer these same terms to all AI companies, which in our opinion we think everyone should be willing to accept. We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements. We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can. The world is a complicated, messy, and sometimes dangerous place.”
This is a developing story that will be updated with additional information.
Read the full article here
