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Our Agreement with the Department of War

Our Agreement with the Department of War

surprisetalk

Comments (190)

  • tfehring
    > For intelligence activities, any handling of private information will comply with the Fourth Amendment, the National Security Act of 1947 and the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978, Executive Order 12333, and applicable DoD directives requiring a defined foreign intelligence purpose. The AI System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.S. persons’ private information as consistent with these authorities. The system shall also not be used for domestic law-enforcement activities except as permitted by the Posse Comitatus Act and other applicable law.My reading of this is that OpenAI's contract with the Pentagon only prohibits mass surveillance of US citizens to the extent that that surveillance is already prohibited by law. For example, I believe this implies that the DoW can procure data on US citizens en masse from private companies - including, e.g., granular location and financial transaction data - and apply OpenAI's tools to that data to surveil and otherwise target US citizens at scale. As I understand it, this was not the case with Anthropic's contract.If I'm right, this is abhorrent. However, I've already jumped to a lot of incorrect conclusions in the last few days, so I'm doing my best to withhold judgment for now, and holding out hope for a plausible competing explanation.(Disclosure, I'm a former OpenAI employee and current shareholder.)
  • piker
    > The Department of War may use the AI System for all lawful purposes, consistent with applicable law, operational requirements, and well-established safety and oversight protocols. The AI System will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control, nor will it be used to assume other high-stakes decisions that require approval by a human decisionmaker under the same authorities. Per DoD Directive 3000.09 (dtd 25 January 2023), any use of AI in autonomous and semi-autonomous systems must undergo rigorous verification, validation, and testing to ensure they perform as intended in realistic environments before deployment.The emphasized language is the delta between what OpenAI agreed and what Anthropic wanted.OpenAI acceded to demands that the US Government can do whatever it wants that is legal. Anthropic wanted to impose its own morals into the use of its products.I personally can agree with both, and I do believe that the Administration's behavior towards Anthropic was abhorrant, bad-faith and ultimately damaging to US interests.
  • eoskx
    Not great? Seems kind of loose language? It isn't OpenAI saying no autonomous weapons use, but only that use must be consistent with laws, regulations, and department policies: "The Department of War may use the AI System for all lawful purposes, consistent with applicable law, operational requirements, and well-established safety and oversight protocols. The AI System will not be used to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control, nor will it be used to assume other high-stakes decisions that require approval by a human decisionmaker under the same authorities."More of the same here. Not a wonder why the DoD signed with OpenAI and instead of Anthropic. Delegating morality to the law when you know the law is not adequate seems like "not a good thing"."For intelligence activities, any handling of private information will comply with the Fourth Amendment, the National Security Act of 1947 and the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act of 1978, Executive Order 12333, and applicable DoD directives requiring a defined foreign intelligence purpose. The AI System shall not be used for unconstrained monitoring of U.S. persons’ private information as consistent with these authorities. The system shall also not be used for domestic law-enforcement activities except as permitted by the Posse Comitatus Act and other applicable law."
  • zmmmmm
    Saying that an entity with the power to make its own laws can use something for "all lawful purposes" is saying they can use it for anything.
  • Buttons840
    I don't think Anthropic is a saint that will never do anything unethical. I don't think ChatGPT is any better or worse.But I do think my cancelling ChatGPT so I can try Claude, at this time, sends the message I want to send, which is why I did it.
  • caidan
    How incredibly unsurprising. This is why it is pointless to make moral stands as employees when you do not ultimately have power over the companies decisions. The only power you have is to quit.I wonder how many will do so, and how many will simply accept Sam’s AI written rationalization as this own and keep collecting their obscene pay packages…
  • eoskx
    OpenAI: "let's delegate morality to laws that we know are wholly inadequate for AI to absolve ourselves of any moral responsiblity."
  • throwaway911282
    People forget Anthropic made a deal with PALANTIR. And when this was caught, they just spinned the PR to their favor. While OAI may not be seen as the good guys, I really hope people see the god complex of Dario and what Anthropic has done.
  • solenoid0937
    Any OAI employee with >$2M NW that chooses to stick around is simply devoid of a moral compass. No different than working for xAI or Palantir now.I get you have tens of millions vesting. Hope you find it within you to be a good person instead of just a successful one.
  • nkassis
    This blog post really doesn't make it sound any better there is no clear refusal to participate in the questionable uses Anthropic was against. Merely must be legal and must be tested.This feels like IBM in the 1930s selling tabulating machines to the Germans and downplaying their knowledge of their use. They seem to want us to naively believe they won't use it for exactly what the military has always wanted, autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. Further more there are much more mundane use they might make of the technology that is perfectly legal yet morally in gray areas.
  • -_-
    “The Department of War may use the AI System for all lawful purposes, consistent with applicable law, operational requirements, and well-established safety and oversight protocols.”So DoW did get the “all lawful purposes” language they were after, with reference to existing (inadequate, in my view) regulations around autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.
  • FusionX
    It's hard to believe that this was written in any good faith when there's so much beating around the bush and careful legalese wordplay.
  • Waterluvian
    These communications offend me because they treat the audience like they’re stupid, stupid, stupid.But I imagine that being honest about your corporate identity is suboptimal. It’s probably an important cognitive dissonance tool for the employees? It’s like when autocracies repeat big obvious lies endlessly. Gives those who want to opt out of reality an option.
  • burnJS
    As a stealth ceo of a profitable SaaS. This is a nice reminder for my company to wind down its relationship with OpenAI. I have no doubt Anthropic will eventually become evil but at least they have a backbone today.Goodbye Sam.Edit: Also, referring to the DOD as the Department of War is cringe.
  • furryrain
    > Fully autonomous weapons. The cloud deployment surface covered in our contract would not permit powering fully autonomous weapons, as this would require edge deployment.Can anyone explain this constraint?Why do fully autonomous weapons require edge deployment?Does "fully autonomous" in this context mean "disconnected from the Internet"?If so, can a drone with Internet connectivity use OpenAI?Or maybe it's about on-premise requirements: the military doesn't want to depend on OpenAI's DCs for weaponry, and instead wants OpenAI in their own DCs for that?
  • dojomouse
    > The cloud deployment surface covered in our contract would not permit powering fully autonomous weapons, as this would require edge deployment.… What?? Much of this seems duplicitous, but this isn’t even coherent. Is their implication that it’s not “autonomous” if it involves an api call to an external system? That mere definition would be extremely alarming.
  • maniacwhat
    Hold on, isn't the government subject to the law anyway?So a contract saying "they can only do x and y when it is legal", is not really any different to a contract without the legal clause. I.e. "they can do x and y".
  • chiararvtk
    "What if the government just changes the law or existing DoW policies?"Our contract explicitly references the surveillance and autonomous weapons laws and policies as they exist today, so that even if those laws or policies change in the future, use of our systems must still remain aligned with the current standards reflected in the agreement. So, this apply only if they changes the law, not if they break the law."What happens if the government violates the terms of the contract?"As with any contract, we could terminate it if the counterparty violates the terms. We don’t expect that to happen.WE COULD [...]. Yeah, I believe
  • fluidcruft
    Does OpenAI enforce those red lines in all contracts?From what I can tell the Anthropic issue was triggered by something Palantir was doing as a contractor for DoW, not anything related to direct contracts between DoW and Anthropic, and DoW was annoyed that Anthropic interfered with what Palantir was up to.In other words will OpenAI enforce these "red lines" against use by a third-party government contractor?If not, this seems pretty meaningless if they are essentially playing PR while hiding behind Palantir.
  • pruetj
    > Why could you reach a deal when Anthropic could not? Did you sign the deal they wouldn’t? Based on what we know, we believe our contract provides better guarantees and more responsible safeguards than earlier agreements, including Anthropic’s original contract.Weak. You reached a deal that Anthropic could not because you demanded more safeguards than Anthropic?? (Based on what you know, of course).Makes total sense!
  • PunchyHamster
    Ah, yes, OpenAI, org known for keeping the word they gave on the direction of the company, with literal lie about that in their very name.
  • yusufozkan
    This is the same company that started as a nonprofit dedicated to open AI safety research, then became a capped-profit entity, then effectively closed-source, then dropped the cap, and is now pursuing full for-profit conversion. Every single guardrail they've set for themselves has been quietly revised or removed once it became inconvenient. Anyone want to bet on how long those exclusions last?
  • skygazer
    OAI: “If they stretch, reinterpret or beak the law with our systems, well, that’s on them. Good luck everybody!”
  • SirensOfTitan
    I deleted my OpenAI account months ago. If LLMs and adjacent technology are truly a paradigm shift, I can’t think of many worse than Sam Altman to shepard us through that. He is a pure opportunist who has already shown how little he believes in outside of his own power and wealth.
  • _alternator_
    The agreement puts no restrictions on the government beyond “all lawful purposes,” which is what Anthropic objected to.> “ The Department of War may use the AI System for all lawful purposes… [proceeds to describe current law, with clear openings if the law changes]”Thus, OAI is relying on the Trump administration’s interpretation of current law. Which, I will remind readers, suggests that it is legal to kill civilians on boats, kidnap foreign leaders, deploy troops in American cities, shoot American citizens protesting ICE.Yeah I’ve cancelled my OAI sub.
  • dgxyz
    Added to the ever growing commercial product shit list.I’m going to be left with scrap PCs and Debian at this rate.
  • operator_nil
    Remember that this is the future that Altman is building for “all of humanity”
  • Keyframe
    Not saying it was, but the course of actions awfully look like a setup was made for Anthropic.
  • timmg
    I don't really have anything against OpenAI's stance here. If that's how they want it to be, they have that choice.But Sam pretending that he wanted the same restrictions as Anthropic *and* seeing how quickly they swooped in and made a deal with the DoD really skeeves me out. (But Sam always gave me the heebie jeebies).Anyway, I've always preferred Claude, so I'm going to happily stay a paying customer there. This may end up being a big "branding" differentiator.
  • vldszn
    I built a website that shows a timeline of recent events involving Anthropic, OpenAI, and the U.S. government.Posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195085
  • ddtaylor
    I look forward to seeing more abusive tactics by the US government powered by AI and the language OpenAI will use to confuse the public into thinking they aren't responsible.
  • rf15
    I wonder if the autonomous weapon platforms they'll build will be surprisingly susceptible to friendly fire... I don't think the DoW knows what kind of Pandora's Box they just bought.
  • apolloartemis
    If anyone at OpenAI is reading this, it would be super valuable if the contract might be updated to specifically make reference to the recent law prohibiting AI-based nuclear launch. On 2/27/2026 the Trump Administration made a statement to the Washington Post stating their support for this restriction (which is already law and would take an Act of Congress to amend). FY2025 NDAA, Section 1638: Sense of Congress with Respect to use of Artificial Intelligence to Support Strategic Deterrence (a) Sense of Congress.--It is the sense of Congress that-- (1) the considered use of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools presents opportunities to strengthen the security of critical strategic communications and early warning networks, improve the efficiency of planning processes to reduce the risk of collateral damage, and enhance U.S. capabilities for modeling weapons functionality in support of stockpile stewardship; and (2) even with such applications, particular care must be taken to ensure that the incorporation of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools does not increase the risk that our Nation's most critical strategic assets can be compromised. (b) Statement of policy.-- It is the policy of the United States that the use of artificial intelligence efforts should not compromise the integrity of nuclear safeguards, whether through the functionality of weapons systems, the validation of communications from command authorities, or the principle of requiring positive human actions in execution of decisions by the President with respect to the employment of nuclear weapons. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/5009...
  • jondwillis
    > AI-enabled mass surveillance is fine as long as it isn’t domestic.> We want AI to be aligned with all of humanity.One of many contradictions. Liars.
  • jonahbenton
    Rule of law. The Dept of War is not the legal name. He can eff off.
  • addedlovely
    time to delete my account.
  • solarkraft
  • foo12bar
    Sam won't even sign his name to this press release.
  • dizhn
    Are they not allowed to say department of defence? I know botj names are official now but this is a choice on their own blog.
  • eglove
    This means they will be taking bailouts next year.
  • anon
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  • aabhay
    In my opinion all this discussion of the contract language is a subterfuge. The real question is why the government was requesting this language in the first place. Clearly there’s more to it than a legal battle.In my mind, the government would be fully happy to use this to surveil citizens (and indeed anyone) with or without any legal basis, but the issue was that Anthropic has a safety stack / training and inference protocols that it follows. Refusals, abuse models, and manual guardrails. They didn’t want to shut those off. Likely there were some very basic technical reasons, some being that the team’s safety posture is fully ingrained in the model itself and thus difficult to remove.In this document, OpenAI admits that while they are not “turning off” their safety stack, they are completely willing to provide the government with a different model, different guardrails, etc. That should be incredibly concerning. Anthropic was unwilling to do this, cited their ToS, and ultimately had to walk away from the deal. Given that the government (DoW really) framed this in terms of a hilariously stupid position (surveillance and autonomous weapons), Anthropic felt that this was something they could voice to the public and therefore the entire guardrails discussion turned into a “we want the language changed”. Also the government can’t actually compel Anthropic to create new guardrails so they had no choice but to raise the stakes, make this a moral thing, and basically accuse Anthropic of being woke.IMO this is really sad for OpenAI employees. Yet again Sam Altman proves that he wants to weasel his way around public perception. Folks at the company have to grapple with working for someone of that disposition.
  • anon
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  • anon
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  • namuol
    The timing of the release and the phrasing used in the headline: Woof.
  • WD-42
    All this says is that all uses must remain lawful. So what? As if this admin has been a shining example of lawful behavior.This is weak.
  • notepad0x90
    Here is a point Mr. Altman might not have considered. Everyone in Trump's circle will probably get a pardon no matter what. but not the CEOs who were collaborators. not in the inner circle but still complicit.Even Google and Microsoft should be worried. This is like 1936 germany, we have ways to go. Look at the tune this administration is singing, if they get their way these CEOs aren't looking at law suits and federal investigations, the current order of things will be long gone by the time people start asking who's responsible for all the blood on the streets.
  • xvector
    Wow, how incredibly anti-human. Humanity's only hope seems to be Anthropic getting to ASI first and locking OpenAI out.
  • oliwarner
    I feel like I keep saying this but it's critical to remember what OpenAI says on its blog doesn't have to align with what it delivers to the Pentagon.
  • mock-possum
    If I hadn’t already canceled my account over them including ads in a paid service, I’d certainly be canceling over this. Anthropic is lucky they have some spine, otherwise they’d have been binned as well.
  • johnwheeler
    More Sam Altman lies. Can’t believe anything that jerk says
  • SilverElfin
    OpenAI basically bribed the government into attacking Anthropic, via political donations to the MAGA PAC. They couldn’t not compete with an inferior product so Altman and Brockman went this route.As for OpenAI’s defense - not buying it.“OpenAI’s President Gave Millions to Trump. He Says It’s for Humanity”: https://www.wired.com/story/openai-president-greg-brockman-p...
  • 9ersaur
    You’re done, Sam.
  • 9ersaur
    You’re done Sam.
  • ml-anon
    It’s the fucking department of defense.
  • ob102
    by now, we all know the core characters of altman and trump and their enablers. press releases (hell any of their words) mean nothing. they are just distracting fodder for fools and sycophants.
  • einpoklum
    Do we really need to read the text of a statement entitled "Our agreement with the department of war"? If it weren't the US, it would still be something that any person of moral character would never get in the position to write.And it _is_ the US department of war - just now entered into yet another war of aggression against Iran, with no cause nor legal basis (not even domestic IIANM), in and endless list of wars, direct and indirect. With another crown jewel being the support, funding and arming for the still-unhalted genocide in Gaza.
  • itsthecourier
    now DeepSeek and Qwen obtain similar or even more lenient terms, then a reckless slippery slope for supremacy and maybe at some point there won't be 2 player fighting, but a 3rd created by this exact dynamic, an autonomous unaligned undetected AI
  • blurbleblurble
    too late bro
  • Allower
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  • shablulman
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  • brianbest101
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  • bishop_cobb
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  • imwideawake
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  • nickysielicki
    [flagged]
  • hereme888
    Well worded. Plentiful protections for themselves and others.
  • hokkos
    Why is everyone mad if they have better guaranties that anthropic use to have ?