How OpenAI caved to the Pentagon on AI surveillance
TL;DR
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced new Pentagon contract terms, contrasting with Anthropic's blacklisting for refusing mass surveillance and lethal autonomous weapons. Altman claims to maintain safety principles while cooperating with the military.
On Friday evening, amidst fallout from a standoff between the Department of Defense and Anthropic, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that his own company had successfully negotiated new terms with the Pentagon. The US government had just moved to blacklist Anthropic for standing firm on two red lines for military use: no mass surveillance of Americans and no lethal autonomous weapons (or AI systems with the power to kill targets without human oversight). Altman, however, implied that he'd found a unique way to keep those same limits in OpenAI's contract.
"Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillan …