https://fortune.com/2026/02/27/openai-in-talks-with-pentagon...
But what's the most charitable / objective interpretation of this?
For example - https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230
Does it suggest that determination of "lawful use" and Dario's concerns falls upon the government, not the AI provider?
Other folks have claimed that Anthropic planned to burn the contentious redlines into Claude's constitution.
Update: I have cancelled my subscriptions until OpenAI clarifies the situation. From an alignment perspective Anthropic's stand seems like the correct long-term approach. And at least some AI researchers appear to agree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_hunt
It's absurd, and doubly so if OAI's deal includes the same or even similar redlines to what Anthropic had.
this seems strictly better than what anthropic had. anthropic has ruined their relationship with the US govt, giving oai a good negotiating hand
the oai folks are good at making deals, just look at all the complex funding arrangements they have
> anthropic has ruined their relationship with the US govt, giving oai a good negotiating hand
You want to try defending this ridiculous statement a bit more thoroughly?
For a start, the designation by the government of a company as a supply chain risk is not a negotiating tool. It may well be found to be arbitrary and capricious once the courts look at it. Business have rights too.
For another, why do you think OAI was able to make what looks like the same deal? Anthropic was willing to say yes to anything lawful up to their red lines, and it was still a no. Why turn around and give OAI exactly the same thing, unless it's not really what it looks like?
And Altman is always looking for the next buck.
All these supposedly impressive complex funding arrangements have OAI on the hook to firms like Oracle in the hundreds of billions of dollars. No indication at all how this unprofitable business will become a trillion dollar juggernaut.
the oai deal is similar, but it includes technical safeguards. I think anthropic would have wanted the oai deal
the deal was not only successful because the govt is rebounding. the miltary prefers boundaries to be technical, not contractual
they can try using it, and trust that it will only operate within its designed limits, where the output is reliable
technical barriers to misuse help prevent both accidental and bad-faith misuse. a contract allows both kinds of misuse, enforced only by lawsuits. filing in court to dispute the terms is not always allowed
No. It's unlawful abuse of power.
> the miltary prefers boundaries to be technical, not contractual
That's nice for the military. Meanwhile, Anthropic has the right to refuse the use of its IP without being subject to punishment by the government.
You seem to me to be irretrievably "deal-brained", and not at all concerned about the obvious abuse of power by the government here, or the constant display of bad faith by gov't officials.
1. No global surveillance on citizens
2. No autonomous killing machines (essentially)
That was it, Anthropic was fine with everything else but they couldn't (in their conscience?) agree to these two things and just these two very reasonable demands caused the govt. to spiral so bad.
Even Disney couldn't ignore the mass cancellations after dropping Kimmel and Disney+ bearly turns over a profit.
Realistically, you need at least ~1M subscribers to cancel to make this painful.
But I suspect this will get drowned out in the face of other news.
If you back down from using Chatgpt, you throw a wrench in their growth numbers.
I would consider training data could have important info as well and to be honest, with their circular financing, Nvidia <-> openAI with GPU's being the main cost (and given that OpenAI isn't facing the Ram crisis heck it created the ram crisis by pre-ordering 20%) and recent deals, money isn't an issue to them for some time now. Growth is.
You are also forgetting that OpenAI is planning to add ads in which case you would be the product, its better not to discourage anyone who wishes to cancel perhaps.
Other commentators have made some good points as well and I used to think the same thing as you but I do think that cancelling might make the most sense.
That or if you want to cause maximum damage, trying to burn the most tokens that you physically can asking random things to burn OpenAI's money but remember that the model still takes energy requirements so you'd be wasting energy for something quite pointless.
IMO, it might be better to cancel/not use OpenAI.
>The axios article doesn’t have much detail and this is DoW’s decision, not mine. But if the contract defines the guardrails with reference to legal constraints (e.g. mass surveillance in contravention of specific authorities) rather than based on the purely subjective conditions included in Anthropic’s TOS, then yes. This, btw, was a compromise offered to—and rejected by—Anthropic.
https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027566426970530135
> For the avoidance of doubt, the OpenAI - @DeptofWar contract flows from the touchstone of “all lawful use” that DoW has rightfully insisted upon & xAI agreed to. But as Sam explained, it references certain existing legal authorities and includes certain mutually agreed upon safety mechanisms. This, again, is a compromise that Anthropic was offered, and rejected.
> Even if the substantive issues are the same there is a huge difference between (1) memorializing specific safety concerns by reference to particular legal and policy authorities, which are products of our constitutional and political system, and (2) insisting upon a set of prudential constraints subject to the interpretation of a private company and CEO. As we have been saying, the question is fundamental—who decides these weighty questions? Approach (1), accepted by OAI, references laws and thus appropriately vests those questions in our democratic system. Approach (2) unacceptably vests those questions in a single unaccountable CEO who would usurp sovereign control of our most sensitive systems.
> It is a great day for both America’s national security and AI leadership that two of our leading labs, OAI and xAI have reached the patriotic and correct answer here
It is a great day for both America’s national security and AI leadership that two of our leading labs, OAI and xAI have reached the patriotic and correct answer here
Nothing in the quoted text comes anywhere close to the realm of justifying the retaliatory actions.
“You are impinging on my freedom to force you to participate in activities you have expressly indicated it is against your will to engage in! You bully! I am such a victim!”
https://xcancel.com/SecWar/status/2027507717469049070?s=20
This is endemic of the entire current administration. It is as disappointing as it is unsurprising.
(Just in case anyone was wondering, I live in Israel)
Conversely, I’m glad that we’re looking a little further than that, and are worried about what happens after this missile exchange. After living through an endless “global war on terror” that gave us the biggest mass surveillance enabling act, it’s hard to not dismiss “it’s just until the end of this war, and we promise it’ll end well!”
According to Anthropic, their terms have been in their contract from the beginning. The only decision they made recently is not to be strong-armed into renegotiating their contract to allow things they don't want to allow. I don't see how that's a bad thing.
What’s the difference between a company not building something that’s fit for purpose for fighting a war (like a nursery refusing to build land mines), and thus not being a qualified supplier to the Government for conducting military operations, vs. being tarred with the “supply chain risk” brush? The former seems uncontroversial; the latter seems petty and retaliatory. “Supply chain risk” designations are for companies that you would do business with but might be compromised by the enemy, like when a supplier agrees to provide the DoW grenades, but the grenades could be intentionally defective such that they detonate prematurely in the soldier’s hand.
Besides, as an Israeli, imagine a world in which the manufacturers of Zyklon B refused to sell Hitler their product for the purposes of gassing human beings. It might not have prevented the Holocaust, but at least maybe impeded it a little.
Apropos to this controversy, this story appeared yesterday—after 31 years following the Balkan wars, Croatia finally eliminated the last land mine: https://glashrvatske.hrt.hr/en/domestic/croatia-declared-fre...
Honestly, if the Holocaust was today, we would probably get 10% of comments here trying to defend "both sides". Some people have a need to try to defend every side, even if one of the sides it's asking for them to be murdered.
1. We've seen government lawyers write memos explaining why such-and-such obviously illegal act is legal (see: torture memo). Until challenged, this is basically law.
2. We've seen government change the law to make whatever they want legal (see: patriot act)
3. We've seen courts just interpret laws to make things legal
A contractor doesn't realistically have the power to push back against any of these avenues if they agree to allow anything legal.
(At the risk of triggering Godwin's Law, remember that for the most part the Holocaust was entirely legal - the Nazi's established the necessary authorization. Just to illustrate that when it comes to certain government crimes, the law alone is an insufficient shield.)
So the question is: do you trust the government to effectively govern its own use of AI? or do you trust Anthropic's enforcement of its TOS?
Does the qualifier "domestic" for mass surveillance mean that OpenAI allows the use of its models for whatever isn't "domestic"?
... Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force ...If his characterization of the agreement is correct, which I will not believe and you should not believe until a trustworthy news outlet publishes the text, I suppose this would convince me that Hegseth does not literally plan to build a Terminator for democracy-ending purposes. There's a lot of inexcusable stuff here regardless, but perhaps merely boycotting OpenAI and the US military would be a sufficient response if this all checks out.
It seems like you chose to immediately disbelieve it.
> until a trustworthy news outlet publishes the text
If you've found one of these, let me know. I'm still looking...
> If you've found one of these, let me know. I'm still looking...
I do not assume, and I would recommend that you do not assume, that there is such a thing as a text of the contract. It's much easier to lie about contents of documents that don't actually exist yet. Then you can craft the text in response to public feedback, writing it down in early March and telling people that it's totally a copy of what was agreed to on February 27.
As a corollary, you should be skeptical of any purported text that is not widely published soon. If there is indeed such a contract, and it says what Altman claims, he will desperately want to ensure that his employees have read a "leak" of the text by Monday morning.
ChatGPT maker OpenAI has the same redlines as Anthropic when it comes to working with the Pentagon, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed to CNN.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/27/tech/openai-has-same-redl...
If theres anything this admin doesn't like, its being postured against or called out by literally anyone, especially in public.
A few months down the line, OpenAI will quietly decide that their next model is safe enough for autonomous weapons, and remove their safeguard layer. The mass surveillance enablement might be an indirect deal through Palantir.
Anthropic said that mass surveillance was per se prohibited even if the government self-certified that it was lawful.
https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/35909013656801
I'm sure more will drop in the coming months.
It says it right on the homepage. Twice. Once for people, once for organisations. It’s right there in green: “BEST (SCORED OUT OF 100)”. And if you go into any of them, you see a score like N/100.
Found the methodology page, and it clarifies it goes from -100 to 100.
https://goodindex.org/methodology#:~:text=How%20Scoring%20Wo...
* no military use
* no lethal use
* no use in support of law enforcement
* no use in support of immigration enforcement
* no use in mass surveillance
* no use in domestic mass surveillance (but mass surveillance of foreigners is OK)
* no use in domestic surveillance
* no use in surveillance
* require independent audits
* require court oversight
* require company to monitor use
* require company to monitor use and divulge it to employees
* some other form of human rights monitoring or auditing
* some other form of restriction on theaters/conflicts/targets
* company will permit some of these uses (not purport to forbid them by license, contract, or ToS) but not customize software to facilitate them
* company can unilaterally block inappropriate uses
* company can publicly disclose uses it thinks are inappropriate
* some other form of remedy
* government literally has to explain why some uses are necessary or appropriate to reassure people developing capabilities, and they have some kind of ongoing bargaining power to push back
It feels normal to me that a lot of people would want some of those things, but kind of unlikely that they would readily agree on exactly which ones.
I even think there's a different intuition about the baseline because one version is "nobody works on weapons except for people who specifically make a decision to work for an arms company because they have decided that's OK according to their moral views" (working on weapons is an abnormal, deliberate decision) and another version is "every company might sell every technology as part of a weapons system or military application, and a few people then object because they've decided that's not OK according to their moral views" (refusing to work on weapons is an abnormal, deliberate decision). I imagine a fair number of people in computing fields effectively thought that the norm or default for their industry was the latter, because of the perception that there are "special" military contractors where people get security clearances and navigate military procurement processes, and most companies are not like that, so you were not working on any form of weapon unless you intentionally chose to do so. But, having just been to the Computer History Museum earlier this week, I also see that a lot of Silicon Valley companies have actually been making weapons systems for as long as there has been a Silicon Valley.
But as innovation slows globally, it is implementation, ethics, and ideology that will once again be the dominant metrics of progress, so there's a new window emerging to push for this social/moral change in technology once again.
So it's still critically important that we actively work towards finding a meaningful, socially contagious differentiator other than "ethical technologist" even if it's difficult- look at what OpenAI gets away with under that flimsy banner.
An algorithm, an ML model trained to predict next tokens to write meaningful text, is going to KILL actual humans by itself.
So killing people is legal,
Killing people by a random process is legal,
A randomized algorithm deciding on who to kill is legal,
And some of you think you are legally protected because they used the word “domestic”?
Who said that any of it is legal? Keeping in mind that when the government does something, it usually takes more than 24h for there to be an official determination on whether they broke the law.
They will deploy this on a domestic scale and claim to use it to locate non-domestic threats. I can’t believe anyone is falling for this.
- OpenAI is ok with use of their AI for autonomous weapons, as long as there is "human responsibility"
- Anthropic is not ok with use of their AI for autonomous weapons
So there’s the difference, and an erasure of a red line. OpenAI is good with autonomous weapon systems. Requiring human responsibility isn’t saying much. Theres already military courts, rules of engagement, and international rules of war.
Income and revenue sources always, inevitably, and without fail, determine behavior.
Both are based in Europe but Proton Lumo has the better privacy promises.
Would be interested in experiences of others with those alternatives for question/answering type research (not for coding for which there exist other, better alternatives like Gemini and Claude)
But tbh I just switched to Anthropic, they need all the support they can get. Claude is great for question/answer.
I hope everyone goes and works for Anthropic and OpenAI collapses.
Markets going to be interesting on Monday. This plus a war. Urgh.
and we know we can trust openAI because they were founded on "open" and "safe" AI (up until they realized how much money there was to be made, at which point their only value changed to "make money")
Yesterday and the day before sentiment seemed to be focused on “Anthropic selling out”, then that shifted to “Anthropic holds true to its principles in a David vs Goliath” and “the industry will rally around one another for the greater good.” But suddenly we’re seeing a new narrative of “Evil OpenAI swoops in to make a deal with the devil.”
Reminds of that weekend where Sam Altman lost control of OpenAI.
Mad respect to Sam, now I believe OpenAI have better chance to win in the race
But I suspect the public sentiment will eventually turn against him. When society sets its pitchforks on big tech he’ll be the poster boy. A 21st century John D. Rockefeller.
Him, Musk, Bezos, and Zuck.
the only thing pitchfork-armed peasants have ever accomplished were failed tax revolts.
sama running circles around these tech dorks. winning the software game is just a matter of not being a total sperg it seems.
Seems somewhere between very isolating and very narcissistic.
anything HN countersignals, go long on.
Are he and his peers Hitler or they the naive oligarchs who think they can keep populist leaders and their constituencies under their thumb? Only to be out maneuvered by the people who the masses think have their back.
I know many folks who think their political leaders have the best interest at heart (rightly or wrongly). I know nobody who thinks tech leaders do. At best they want to be them.
So it wasn't about those principles making them a supply chain risk? They're just trying to punish Anthropic for being the first ones to stand firm on those principles?
As Trump himself likes to say, "Promises made, promises kept."
Sadly it would be very difficult for Anthropic to relocate to another country with their IP, models, and infrastructure.
(Guess I need to build everything I intended this year in a weekend.)
weasels gonna weasel
The little respect I had left for Sam is now wiped. Makes me sick.
Growing up I always thought AI would be this beautiful tool, this thing that opens the gates to a new society where work becomes optional in a way. But I failed to think about human greed.
I remember following OpenAI way back when it was a non profit explaining how AI uncontrolled could be highly detrimental. Now Sam has not only taken that non profit and made it for-profit. It seems he’s making the most evil decisions he can for a buck.
Cancel your subscription, tell your friends to. And vote to heavily tax these companies and their leaders.
Ended up renewing my Claude sub today instead. Principled stances matter and I no longer trust OpenAI to be trustworthy custodians of my AI History.
I linked to https://notdivided.org/ as the reasoning why.
Was shocking back then to think how far we’ve come.
taking real action is your choice, but stop pretending this kind of thing matters one iota
edit: to be clear, i'm not advocating for nihilism, but tricking yourself into thinking you made a difference to make yourself feel better isn't the play either
Cancelling ChatGPT sends a signal that you don't agree with weaponizing AI. Switching to Claude says you support Anthropic's principled stance against it. If you have a strong opinion either way, today is the day to vote with your wallet.
Dismissing every small action as meaningless is just apathy and how nothing ever changes.
It's entirely possible for both Anthropic and OpenAI to be in the wrong here. This is a massive publicity win but it doesn't make them heroes in my book.
So yes, do cancel if you were paying for OpenAI. Stop using it entirely even, but don't necessarily expect to slow down their encroachment, sadly.
I was not a Chat-GPT user even before this, but I'm bumping my Claude Code subscription to the next tier up. Fuck OpenAI.
This is blatantly false and intellectually dishonest. Of course it matters. Your edit is also wrong; you are advocating for nihilism with statments like these.
This is a red line for me. It's clear OpenAI has zero values and will give Hesgeth whatever he wants in exchange for $$$.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/technology/openai-reaches...
Anthropic probably made the mistake of questioning the Military's activities related to Claude after the Venezuela mission and wanted reassurance that the model wouldn't be used for the redlines, and the military didn't like this and told them we aren't using your models unless you agree to not question us and then the back and forth started.
In the end, we will probably have both OpenAI and Anthropic providing AI to the military and that's a good thing. I don't think they will keep the supply chain risk on Anthropic for more than a week.
(Person Of Interest for those who haven't seen it, watched it a decade ago and it's actually quite surprising how on point it ended up being)
Right. Pete "FAFO" Hegseth is a model of intelligence, moderation, and respect for due process. Nothing to see here.
So by that measure the US govt can go get some Israeli software to surveill their domestic populace!
Homo sapiens deserve to become extinct.
Use it to save your data, shouldn't be hard to get it working elsewhere
Screw Sam, and screw OpenAI. I've been a customer of theirs since the first month their API opened to developers. Today I cancelled my subscription and deleted my account.
I'd already signed up for Claude Max and had been slow to cancel my OpenAI subscriptions. This finally made the decision easy.
The same day:
Pssst psst Samy Samy, come here we have money and data psst
> Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network.
so foreign mass surveillance is all good?
Under normal circumstances, that would seem really plausible. But given how far Trump continues to go just out of spite and to project power, it actually is the opposite.
I am fully prepared to believe that they got absolutely nothing else out of it (to date).
The whole story makes no sense to me. The DoW didn’t get what they wanted, and now Anthropic is tarred and feathered.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/trump-will-end-government-use-of...
“OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said the company’s deal with the Defense Department includes those same prohibitions on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, as well as technical safeguards to make sure the models behave as they should.”
They’re willing to let their brand go to trash for this government contract.
Pretty much every American is standing with Anthropic on this. No one left or right wants mass surveillance and terminators. In fact, no one in the world wants this, except the US military.
But Altman seems so desperate to keep the cash coming he’s ready to do anything.
This is really about the imminent strike on Iran which is now super telegraphed. They are gonna use ChatGPT for target selection, and the likely outcome is that it will fuck things up and a bunch of civilians are going to die because of this decision.
When this happens, Altman will go from being merely a drifter to having blood on his hands.
Alternatively, the DoW is simply incompetent and Trump or Hegseth wants to use AI to draft war plans.
A lot of innocent people are about to be harmed because the cogs of fascism are lubricated with blood.
For hardline right wing Israeli government officials who would be privy to such information, the window of time to leverage to US to enact regime change on the Islamic Republic is closing. The survival of Israel over the long run really depends on not having a hardline Islamic regime in Iran developing nuclear weapons. Things like AI safety and US elections are secondary to such prerogatives. The question for voters in the US is whether it really is worth it to the average US citizen to shed blood and tax dollars for this stuff.
I hope there can be a peaceful regime change in Iran and that there will be peaceful relations with Iran and Israel in the future. But damn I wish things could go back to normal with our US political system once this is all settled.
However, if you live in the US and pay a passing attention to our idiotic politics, you know this is right out of the Trump playbook. It goes like this:
* Make a negotiation personal
* Emotionally lash out and kill the negotiation
* Complete a worse or similar deal, with a worse or similar party
* Celebrate your worse deal as a better deal
Importantly, you must waste enormous time and resources to secure nothing of substance.
That's why I actually believe that OpenAI will meet the same bar Anthropic did, at least for now. Will they continue to, in the same way Anthropic would have? Seems unlikely, but we'll see.
1. There's no substantive change. Hegseth/Trump just wanted to punish Anthropic for standing up to them, even if it didn't get them anything else today -- establishing a chilling effect for the future has some value for them in this case, after all. And OpenAI was willing to help them do that, despite earlier claiming that they stood behind Anthropic's decisions.
2. There is a substantive change. Despite Altman's words, they have a tacit understanding that OpenAI won't really enforce those terms, or that they'll allow them to be modified some time in the future when attention has moved on elsewhere.
Either way, it makes Altman look slimy, and OpenAI has aligned with Trump against Anthropic in a place where Anthropic made a correct principled stand. It's been clear for a while that Anthropic has more ethics than OpenAI, but this is more naked than any previous example.
Just to be clear, you believe that the correct, principled stand is that it's OK to use their models for killing people and civilian surveillance?
Both OAI and Anthropic have the same moral leg to stand on here, OAI is just not hypocritical about it.
The US military _does not_ need to build autonomous weapon systems and _should not_ surveil US citizens broadly.
> The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.
(1) Well, did both sides sign the agreement and is it actually effective? Or is it still sitting on someone's desk until it can get stalled long enough?
(2) What does "agreement" even mean? Is it a legally enforceable contract, or just some sort of MoU or pinkie promise?
(3) If it's a legally enforceable contract, is it equally enforceable on all of their contracts, or just some? Do they not have existing contracts this would need to apply to?
(4) What does "reflects them in law and policy" even mean? Since when does DoW make laws, and in what sense do their laws reflect whatever the agreement was? Are these laws he can point to so everyone else can see? Can he at least copy-paste the exact sentences the government agreed to?
The ones that did might as well leave. But there was no open letter when the first military contract was signed. [1] Now there is one?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47176170
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/17/openai-mi...
I always assumed those folks need a way to look strong with their base for a media moment over equitable application of the policies or law.
On the surface, it looks like both rejected 'domestic mass surveillance' and 'autonomous weapon systems', but there seem to be important differences in the fine print, since one company is being labeled a 'supply chain risk' while the other 'reached the patriotic and correct answer'.
One explanation would be that the DoW changed its demands, but I doubt that. Instead, I believe OpenAI found a loophole that allows those cases under certain conditions.
When I need advice for my clandestine operations I always reach for Grok.
I know I'll get down voted but come on, this is so very naive.
I posted about this here after Sam made his tweet:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189756
Source: https://defensescoop.com/2025/01/16/openais-gpt-4o-gets-gree...
So until we see the contract I think it’s fair to assume that OAI and Anthropic got roughly the same deal, with Anthropic insisting on language that actually limits the government, while OAI licked the boot and is passing it off like filet mignon.
shocked pikachu face
Come on by now we all know the only thing Altman (who else is still at OpenAI from the start?) wants it more money and more power, it doesn't really matter how.
What sam and greg don't realize is that the many who succumb to trump's pressure tactics will all be lumped into the same category by history.
Sam and Greg are handing an authoritarian regime that has broken so many laws in the past year a superweapon.
I also absolutely do not trust sleezy Sam Altman when he claims he has the same exact redlines as Anthropic:
> 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.
If Hegseth and Trump attack Anthropic and sign a deal with OpenAI under the same restrictions, it means this is them corrupting free markets by picking which companies win. Maybe it’s at the behest of David Sacks, the corrupt AI czar who complained about lawfare throughout the Biden administration but now cheers on far worse lawfare.
So it’s either a government looking to surveil citizens illegally or a government that is deeply corrupt and is using its power to enrich some people above others.
HN: if you continue to subscribe to OpenAI, if you use it at your startup, you’re no better than the tech bros you often criticize. This is not surprising but beyond shady.
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 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."
> prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility *for the use of force*
The president or anybody at DoD can be "responsible", and we know there will be zero accountability. The courts defer to the executive, and Congress is all-too-happy for the executive to take the flak for their wars.
A bold statement. It would appear they've definitively solved prompt injection and all the other ills that LLMs have been susceptible to. And forgot to tell the world about it.
/s
Edit: It looks like the terms are similar in OpenAI's deal in what they prohibit so it isn't clear why they are any better. We should be the ones dictating what is and isn't prohibited. Not Sam. We will have to wait for more news on what is actually different.
This also means that they should adhere to a deal once it is signed. That's part of the law too. They shouldn't suddenly turn around and try to alter the deal, then retaliate against their deal partner when they say "that wasn't the deal". You can't just go and answer: "Pray we don't alter it further".
The government of a nation sets the example for others, and should be scrupulous in their dealings.
Which is why Hegseths vindictive actions seem just a little bit disproportionate.
> 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.
IF this is true, it SHOULD be verifiable. So, we wait? I mean, I am a dummy, but that language doesn’t seem too washy too me? Either it’s a bold face lie and OpenAI burns because of it or it’s true and the Trump admin is going after the “left” AI company. Or whatever. My point is, someone smarter than me/us is going to fact check Sam’s claim.
Do you really still genuinely believe in this? This is the same person that said ads is going to be the last resort, and yet we are getting ads. I just don't understand how people can trust a single word coming out of folks like Sam, Musk, Trump or whoever rich asshole.
I listen to these people talk and they literally do not have souls. They will say whatever it is they need to get ahead. I watched a couple of Sam speeches and videos, the man does not have anything interesting to say.
DoW: WOKE Antropic tried to impose their 'values' on us? Friendship ended!! National security risk!
OpenAI: We just signed a deal that's strong on values, the exact same ones as Anthropic, no way we would mislead anyone about this
You: Seems legit
What does it even mean to reflect those principles in law? Did they pass a law that says they can't do it? Which one?
What does it mean to "put them into our agreement"? Did they just have a section in the appendix listing various principles, or is there agreement from both parties to not violate those principles? What system does the contract specify for verification of compliance?
You think OpenAI decided to build MurderBot because someone made fun on them selling ads?
[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-al...
I think what you are missing is their annual comp with two commas in it.
https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted
Don't get distracted
You underestimate how many top AI scientists are perfectly okay with building autonomous weapons systems and are not ashamed of it.
Me, and 99% of HN readers, will gladly pull the trigger to release a missile from a drone if we are paid even just US$1,000,000/year.
Now note that many L7+ at OpenAI are making $10 million+ per year.
I sincerely doubt that's true. I hope it's not. $1m is a lot of money, but I find it hard to believe most people would be willing to indiscriminately kill a large number of people for it.
Another point completely unrelated to my previous story: Since the advent of pretty good LLMs starting in 2023, when I watch flims with warfare set in the future, it makes absolutely no sense that soldiers are still manually aiming. I'm not saying it will be like Terminator 2 right away, but surely the 19-22 year old operator will just point the weapon in the general direction of the target, then AI will handle the rest. And yet, we still see people manually aiming and shooting in these scenarios. Am I the only one who cringes when I see this? There is something uncanney valley about it, like seeing a character in a film using a flip phone post-2015! Maybe directors don't want to show us the ugly truth of the future of warfare.
Other universes take it further - Warhammer 40k often features combatants fighting with melee weapons. Rule of cool and all that.
A better way is to say you can always find a cheap sellout at least than the morally dammed cannot claim equality of belief
Shit, I wonder if I still have any of those ‘tres commas club’ t-shirts lying around?
Whether Anthropic’s clear mistreatment means that all other companies should refrain from doing business with the US government isn’t as clear to me. I can see arguments on both sides and I acknowledge it’s probably impossible to eliminate all possible bias within myself.
One thing I hope we can agree on is that it would be good if the contract (or its relevant portions) is made public so that people can judge for themselves, without having to speculate about who’s being honest and who’s lying.
That isn't what many of us are challenging here. We're not concerned about OpenAI's ethics because they agreed to work with the government after Anthropic was mistreated.
We're skeptical because it seems unlikely that those restrictions were such a third rail for the government that Anthropic got sanctioned for asking for them, but then the government immediately turned around and voluntarily gave those same restrictions to OpenAI. It's just tough to believe the government would concede so much ground on this deal so quickly. It's easier to believe that one company was willing to agree to a deal that the other company wasn't.
Well… TACO.
But we all know how OpenAI is desperate for money, its the weakest link in the bubble quite frankly burning Billions and failed at Sora and there isn't much moat as well economically.
DOD giving them billions for a deal feels like a huge carrot on the stick and wink wink (let's have autonomous killing machines) with the skepticism that you, me or perhaps most people of the community would share.
I for what its worth, don't appreciate Anthropic in its whole (I do still remember perhaps the week old thread where everyone pushed on Anthropic for trying to see user data through API when they looked at the chinese models whole thing) but I give credit where its due and Enemy of my Enemy is my friend, and at the moment it seems that OpenAI might be more friendlier to DOD who wishes to create autonomous killing machine and mass surveillance systems which is like Sci-fi level dystopia rather than anthropic.
Until they volunteer evidence that the deal is being misdescribed or that it won't be enforced, you can honestly say that you haven't seen any. What a convenient position!
You're conflating the Trump administration and their fascist tendencies with all US government. You want to work for fascists if you get paid well enough. You can admit that on here.
"we will comply with US law" The problem is, the US government does not actually comply with US law.
My point was I don't think that Money (whether from VC or taking Jobs from other massive AI employers) should be as important issue to them atleast imo.
1. Department of War broadly uses Anthropic for general purposes
2. Minority interests in the Department of War would like to apply it to mass surveillance and/or autonomous weapons
3. Anthropic disagrees and it escalates
4. Anthropic goes public criticizing the whole Department of War
5. Trump sees a political reason to make an example of Anthropic and bans them
6. The entirety of the Department of War now has no AI for anything
7. Department of War makes agreement with another organization
If there was only a minority interest at the department of war to develop mass surveillance / autonomous weapons or it was seen as an unproven use case / unknown value compared to the more proven value from the rest of their organizational use of it, it would make sense that they'd be 1) in practice willing to agree to compromise on this, 2) now unable to do so with Anthropic in specific because of the political kerfuffle.
I imagine they'd rather not compromise, but if none of the AI companies are going to offer them it then there's only so much you can do as a short term strategy.
Like, they haven't paid me a bribe? That seems to be the only "politics" at play in Trumps head.
But man, this blew up pretty fast for a miss-understanding in some negotiation. Something must have been said in those meetings to make anthropic go public.
One of them needs to be investigated for corruption in the next few years. I’d have to assume anyone senior at OpenAI is negotiating indemnities for this.
Never discount the possibility of Hegseth being petty and doing the OpenAI deal with the same terms to imply to the world that Anthropic is being unreasonable because another company signed a deal with him.
This one is very easy. Trump has a well established pattern of making a loud statement to make it appear he didn't lose, even when he did.
https://x.com/sama/status/1876780763653263770
If so, I believe the lawsuit is still going on. I'm personally withholding judgment on him on this matter since I don't know the details.
But it's easy to criticize and judge him on other stuff he's said in public.
openai can deploy safety systems of their own making
from the military perspective this is preferable because they just use the tool -- if it works, it works, and if it doesn't, they'll use another one. with the anthropic model the military needs a legal opinion before they can use the tool, or they might misuse it by accident
this is also preferable if you think the government is untrustworthy. an untrustworthy government may not obey the contract, but they will have a hard time subverting safety systems that openai builds or trains into the model
- When has any AI company shipped "safeguards" that aren't trivially bypassed by mid bloggers? Just one example would be fine.
- The conventional wisdom is that OAI's R&D (including safety) is significantly behind Anthropic's.
- OpenAI is constantly starved for funding. They don't make money. They have every incentive to say yes to a deal that entrenches them into govt systems, regardless of the externalities
Speaking to people's better angels as if it has a chance of influencing Trumps behaviour is a fool's errand. It's not derangement. His word is worthless.
I have two qualms with this deal.
First, Sam's tweet [0] reads as if this deal does not disallow autonomous weapons, but rather requires "human responsibility" for them. I don't think this is much of an assurance at all - obviously at some level a human must be responsible, but this is vague enough that I worry the responsible human could be very far out of the loop.
Second, Jeremy Lewin's tweet [1] indicates that the definitions of these guardrails are now maintained by DoW, not OpenAI. I'm currently unclear on those definitions and the process for changing them. But I worry that e.g. "mass surveillance" may be defined too narrowly for that limitation to be compatible with democratic values, or that DoW could unilaterally make it that narrow in the future. Evidently Anthropic insisted on defining these limits itself, and that was a sticking point.
Of course, it's possible that OpenAI leadership thoughtfully considered both of these points and that there are reasonable explanations for each of them. That's not clear from anything I've seen so far, but things are moving quickly so that may change in the coming days.
[0] https://x.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175
[1] https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230
Government: "Anthropic, let us do whatever we want"
Anthropic: "We have some minimal conditions."
Government: "OpenAI, if we blast Anthropic into the sun, what sort of deal can we get?"
OpenAI: "Uh well I guess I should ask for those conditions"
Government: blasts Anthropic into the sun "Sure whatever, those conditions are okay...for now."
By taking the deal with the DoW, OpenAI accepts that they can be treated the same way the government just treated Anthropic. Does it really matter what they've agreed?
It looks like Anthropic likely wanted to be able to verify the terms on their own volition whereas OpenAI was fine with letting the government police themselves.
From the DoD perspective they don't want a situation, like, a target is being tracked, and then the screen goes black because the Anthropic committee decided this is out of bounds.
So the governments stance is "We already have laws and procedures in place, we don't want and can't have a CEO to also be part of those checks"
I don't think this outcome would have been any different under a normal blue government either. Definitely with less mud slinging though.
Government's not free to say, "We'll blow up your business with a false accusation if you don't give us the terms we want (and then use defence production act to commandeer the product anyway)". How much more blatantly authoritarian does it get than that?
While I don't live in the US, I could imagine the US government arguing that third party doctrine[0] means that aggregation and bulk-analysis of say; phone record metadata is "lawful use" in that it isn't /technically/ unlawful, although it would be unethical.
Another avenue might also be purchasing data from ad brokers for mass-analysis with LLMs which was written about in Byron Tau's Means of Control[1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706321/means-of-con...
DoD is now trying to strongarm Anthropic into changing the deal that they already signed!
I’m not accusing the above commenter of deception; I’m merely saying reasonable people are skeptical. There are classic game theory approaches to address cooperation failure modes. We have to use them. Apologies if this seems cryptic; I’m trying to be brief. It if doesn’t make sense just ask.
I don't want to overanalyze things but I also noticed his statement didn't say "our agreement specifically says chatgpt will never be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance." It said something that kind of gestured towards that, but it didn't quite come out and say it. It says "The DoW agrees with these principles, and we put them in our agreement." Could the principles have been outlined in a nonbinding preamble, or been a statement of the DoW's current intentions rather than binding their future behavior? You should be very suspicious when a corporate person says something vague that somewhat implies what you want to hear - if they could have told you explicitly what you wanted to hear, they would have.
But anyway, it doesn't matter. You said you don't think it should be used for autonomous weapons. I'd be willing to bet you 10:1 that you'll never find altman saying anything like "our agreement specifically says chatgpt will never be used for fully autonomous weapons", now or any point in the future.
To be fair, Anthropic didn't say that either. Merely that autonomous weapons without a HITL aren't currently within Claude's capabilities; it isn't a moral stance so much as a pragmatic one. (The domestic surveillance point, on the other hand, is an ethical stance.)
Their rational was pragmatic. But they specifically said that they didn't agree to let the DoD create fully automatic weapons using their technology. I'll bet 10:1 you won't ever hear Sam Altman say that. He doesn't even imply it today.
Agreed, the moral stance is saying no to DoJ and the US government
In that case, what on earth just happened?
The government was so intent on amending the Anthropic deal to allow 'all lawful use', at the government's sole discretion, that it is now pretty much trying to destroy Anthropic in retaliation for refusing this. Now, almost immediately, the government has entered into a deal with OpenAI that apparently disallows the two use cases that were the main sticking points for Anthropic.
Do you not see something very, very wrong with this picture?
At the very least, OpenAI is clearly signaling to the government that it can steamroll OpenAI on these issues whenever it wants to. Or do you believe OpenAI will stand firm, even having seen what happened to Anthropic (and immediately moved in to profit from it)?
> and that OpenAI is asking for the same terms for other AI companies (so that we can continue competing on the basis of differing services and not differing scruples)
If OpenAI leadership sincerely wanted this, they just squandered the best chance they could ever have had to make it happen! Actual solidarity with Anthropic could have had a huge impact.
Hegseths tweet strongly alluded to this, and the general terms of the agreement are not public, just the hot button ones.
Today it can't be used for mass surveillance, but the executive branch has all the authority it needs to later deem that lawful if it wishes to, the Patriot Act and others see to that.
Anthropic was making the limits contractually explicit, meaning the executive branch could change the line of lawfulness and still couldn't use Anthropic models for mass surveillance. That is where they got into a fight and that is where OpenAI and others can claim today that they still got the same agreement Anthropic wanted.
The two things anthropic refused to do is mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, so why do _you_ think openai refused and still did not get placed on the exact same list.
It's fine to say "I'm not going to resign. I didn't even sign that letter", but thinking that openai can get away with not developing autonomous weapons or mass surveillance is naive at the very best.
So, can you please draw the line when you will quit?
- If OpenAI deal allows domestic mass surveillance - If OpenAI allows the development of autonomous weapons - OpenAI no longer asks for the same terms for other AI companies
Correct?
If so, then if I take your words at face value:
- By your reading non-domestic mass surveillance is fine
- The development of AI based weapons is fine as long as there is one human element in there, even if it could be disabled and then the weapon would work without humans involved
- The day that OpenAI asks for the same terms for other AI companies and if those terms are not granted then that's also fine, because after all, they did ask.
I have become extremely skeptical when seeing people whose livelihood depends on a particular legal entity come out with precise wording around what does and does not constitute their red line but I find it fascinating nonetheless so if you could humor me and clarify I'd be most obliged.
You, and your colleagues, should resign.
It would be better if everyone stopped doing business with OpenAI so these employees lose their stock value.
But of course neither of these things will happen.
Obviously nothing is going to make Teddy quit his cushy OpenAI job.
Edit: I don’t work at OpenAI or in any AI business and my neck is on the chopping block if AI succeeds… like a lot of us. Don’t vilify this guy trying to do what’s right for him given the information he has.
The evidence seems to overwhelmingly point in the opposite direction.
It doesn't even matter if OpenAI is offered the same terms that Anthropic refused. It's absurd to accept them and do business with the Pentagon in that situation.
If you take the government at its word, it's killing Anthropic because Anthropic wanted to assert the ability to draw _some_ sort of redline. If OpenAI's position is "well sucks to be them", there's nothing stopping Hegseth from doing the same to OpenAI.
It doesn't matter at all if OpenAI gets the deal at the same redline Anthropic was trying to assert. If at the end of this the government has succeeded in cutting Anthropic off from the economy, what's next for OpenAI? What happens next time when OpenAI tries to assert some sort of redline?
What's the point of any talk of "AI Safety" if you sign on to a regime where Hegseth (of all people) can just demand the keys and you hand them right over?
And you believe the US government, let alone the current one will respect that? Why? Is it naïveté or do you support the current regime?
> If it turns out that the deal is being misdescribed or that it won't be enforced, I can see why I should quit.
So your logic is your company is selling harmful technology to a bunch of known liars who are threatening to invade democratic countries, but because they haven’t lied yet in this case (for lack of opportunity), you’ll wait until the harm is done and then maybe quit?
I’ll go out on a limb and say you won’t. You seem to be trying really hard to justify to yourself what’s happening so you can sleep at night.
Know that when things go wrong (not if, when), the blood will be on your hands too.
There's a big difference between "the government won't use our tools for domestic surveillance" (DoW/DoD/OpenAI/etc) and "we won't allow anyone to use our tools to support domestic surveillance by the government" (Anthropic)
Hegseth and the current Trump admin are completely incompetent in execution of just about everything but competent administrations (of both parties) have been playing this game for a long time and it's already a lost cause.
I do not know but I would not very optimistic about those new terms.
I don't mean this in any way rude and I apologize if this comes accross as such but believing it won't be used in exactly this way is just naive. History has taught us this lesson again and again and again.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189650#47189970
What is your red line?
Someone might just create a spawn of openai with a tag and do all the stuff there...
There is no much guarantee I think
OpenAI agrees to be put in the same position as Anthropic.
It seems like you must actually somehow believe that history will repeat itself, Hegseth will deem OpenAI a supply chain risk too, then move to Grok or something?
There's surely no way that's actually what you believe...
Standing up for whats right often is not easy and involves hard choices and consequences, your leader has shown you and the world that he is not to be trusted.
I can't tell you what to do but I hope you make the right decision.
And the US Military is forbidden from operating on US soil, but that didn't stop this administration from deploying US Marines to California recently.
You're fooling yourself if you think this administration is following any kind of rule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning
You’re being purposefully niave if you trust any government and especially this government to behave legally or ethically.
Y’all are developing amazing technology. But accept reality and drop whatever sense of moral righteousness you’re carrying here. Not because some asshole on the internet says so, but for your own mental health.
I think its wrong for someone to ask someone to resign but acting that there is no issue here is debating in bad faith.
Or Sam bribed the government to do this, which is also entirely possible.
If you think that means your company isn't going to be involved in lethal autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance... I don't really know what to tell you. I doubt you really believe that. Obviously you will be involved in that and you are effectively working on those projects now.
> My understanding is that the OpenAI deal disallows domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons
Your understanding is entirely wrong. At least stop lying to yourself and admit that you are entirely fine with working on evil things if you are paid enough.
Is it really worth the long-term risk being associated with Sam Altman when the other firms would willingly take you and probably give you a pay bump to boot?
It doesn't make sense to me why anyone would want to associate themselves with Altman. He is universally distrusted. No one believes anything he says. It's insane to work with a person who PG, Ilya, Murati, Musk have all designated a liar and just general creep.
Defending him or the firms actions instantly makes you look terrible, like you'll gladly take the "Elites vs UBI recipients" his vision propagates.
Shame on you people. What a disgusting vision.
One got characterized as supply chain risk and so much for OpenAI to get the same.
And even that being said, I can be wrong but if I remember, OpenAI and every other company had basically accepted all uses and it was only Anthropic which said no to these two demands.
And I think that this whole scenario became public because Anthropic denied, I do think that the deal could've been done sneakily if Anthropic wanted.
So now OpenAI taking the deal doesn't help with the fact that to me, it looks like they can always walk back and all the optics are horrendous to me for OpenAI so I am curious what you think.
The thing which I am thinking OTOH is why would OpenAI come and say, hey guys yea we are gonna feed autonomous killing machines. Of course they are gonna try to keep it a secret right before their IPO and you are an employee and you mention walking out of openAI but with the current optics, it seems that you/other employees of OpenAI are also more willing to work because evidence isn't out here but to me, as others have pointed out, it looks like slowly boiling the water.
OpenAI gets to have the cake and eat it too but I don't think that there's free lunch. I simply don't understand why DOD would make such a high mess about Anthropic terms being outrageous and then sign the same deal with same terms with OpenAI unless there's a catch. Only time will tell though how wrong or right I am though.
If I may ask, how transparent is OpenAI from an employees perspective? Just out of curiosity but will you as a employee get informed of if OpenAI's top leadership (Sam?) decided that the deal gets changed and DOD gets to have Autonomous killing machine. Would you as an employee or us as the general public get information about it if the deal is done through secret back doors. Snowden did show that a lot of secret court deals were made not available to public until he whistleblowed but not all things get whistleblowed though, so I am genuinely curious to hear your thoughts.
In my mind the only people left are those who are there for the stocks.
But they did.
"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."
You learned this where?
You should have said this.
> https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230
Thank you.
who decides these weighty questions? Approach (1), accepted by OAI, references laws and thus appropriately vests those questions in our democratic system. Approach (2) unacceptably vests those questions in a single unaccountable CEO who would usurp sovereign control of our most sensitive systems.
Amodei is the type of person who thinks he can tell the US government what they can and can’t do.
And the US government should have precisely none of that, regardless of whether they’re red or blue.
I don't think that's the case. Amodei is worried that AI is extraordinarily capable, and our current system of checks and balances is not adequate yet to set the proper constraints so the law is correctly enforced. Here's an excerpt from his statement [1]:
Let's do this thought exercise: how long would it take you, using Claude Code, to write some code to crawl the internet and find all the postings of the HN user nandomrumber under all their names on various social media, and create a profile with the top 10 ways that user can be legally harassed? Of course, Claude would refuse to do this, because of its guardrails, but what if Claude didn't refuse?[1]https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war
You see, Obama droned more combatants than anyone else before or after him but always followed a legal paper trail and following the book (except perhaps in some cases, search for Anwar al-Awlaki).
One can argue whether the rules and laws (secret courts, proceedings, asymmetries in court processes that severely compress civil liberties… to the point they might violate other constitutional rights) are legitimate, but he operated within the limits of the law.
You folks just blurt “me ne frego” like a random Mussolini and think you’re being patriotic.
SMH
> And the US government should have precisely none of that, regardless of whether they’re red or blue.
This is a pretty hot take. "You can't break the law and kill people or do mass surveillance with our technology." fuck that, the government should break whatever laws and kill whoever they please
I hope you A: aren't a U.S. citizen, and B: don't vote.
If I'm selling widgets to the government and come to find out they are using those widgets unconstitutionally and to violate my neighbors rights you can be damn sure I'm going to stop selling the gov my widgets. Amodei said that Anthropic was willing to step away if they and the government couldn't come to terms, and instead of the government acting like adults and letting them they decided to double down on being the dumbest people in the room and act like toddlers and throw a massive fit about the whole thing.
No. Altman said human responsibility. Anthropic said human in the loop.
> And Sam’s wording all but confirms that OpenAI’s agreement defers to DoD policies and laws (which a defense contract cannot prescribe), and effectively only pays lip service to the two exclusions.
All but confirmed was not confirmed.
To your second comment, it was clear enough to me to be the most plausible reading of the situation by far.
We state what we think the situation is all the time, without explicitly writing “I think the situation is…”.
>A defense official said the Pentagon’s technology chief whittled the debate down to a life-and-death nuclear scenario at a meeting last month: If an intercontinental ballistic missile was launched at the United States, could the military use Anthropic’s Claude AI system to help shoot it down?
>It’s the kind of situation where technological might and speed could be critical to detection and counterstrike, with the time to make a decision measured in minutes and seconds. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei’s answer rankled the Pentagon, according to the official, who characterized the CEO’s reply as: You could call us and we’d work it out.
>An Anthropic spokesperson denied Amodei gave that response, calling the account “patently false,” and saying the company has agreed to allow Claude to be used for missile defense. But officials have cited this and another incident involving Claude’s use in the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro as flashpoints in a spiraling standoff between the company and the Pentagon in recent days. The meeting was previously reported by Semafor.
I have a hunch that Anthropic interpreted this question to be on the dimension of authority, when the Pentagon was very likely asking about capability, and they then followed up to clarify that for missile defense they would, I guess, allow an exception. I get the (at times overwhelming) skepticism that people have about these tools and this administration but this is not a reasonable position to hold, even if Anthropic held it accidentally because they initially misunderstood what they were being asked.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260227182412/https://www.washi...
Missile detection and decision to make a (nuclear) counterstrike are 2 different things to me but apparently the department of war wants both, so it seems not "just" about missile detection.
Anthropic, with its current war chest, is supposedly employeeing lawyers that are misunderstanding the Department of War? This is considered to be the likelier of possibilities, am I understanding this correctly?
I'm sorry but lol
What a joke. I suggest folks read up on the very poor performance of US ICBM interceptor systems. They're barely a coin flip, in ideal conditions. How is Claude going to help with that? Push the launch interceptor button faster? Maybe Claude can help design a better system, but it's not turning our existing poor systems into super capable systems by simply adding AI.
Probably also got assurances about a bailout when OpenAI collapses.
My bet is that what the DoW wants is pretty clearly tied to mass surveillance and kill-bots. Altman is a snake.
It's like the one honest thing they've done
But the executive-order driven name change just another bit of illegal/extra-legal/paralegal behavior by the administration that, every time we just nod along, eats away at the constitutional structure of our government. So don't go along with it.
"Changing it back" is completely ahistoric.
Or perhaps, maybe, just a little maybe, DoW is getting absolutely excited about mass surveillance and kill-bots?
I didn't have much of an opinion of Altman before but now I think he's a grifting douche.
And they are crossing the picket line, which honestly I was sure they would do, though I did expect it to take a bit longer.
This is too transparent even for sama.
this is going to end up being interpreted as "well, the president signed off on the operation. see - there's a human in the loop!" - is it?
You could recoup your investment in a year by collecting toll. Expedited financing available on good credit!
Well some may voluntarily leave, some will be actively poached by Anthropic perhaps and some I suppose will stay in their jobs because leaving isn't an easy decision to make.
Anyone who chooses to stay shouldn’t have signed the letter. What’s the point of doing it if you’re not going to follow through? If you signed the letter and don’t leave after the demands aren’t met, you’re a liar and a coward and are actively harming every signatory of every future letter.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/21/tumbler-ridge-...
Have we been watching the same Trump admin for the last year? That sound exactly like something the government would do: pointlessly throw a fit and end up signing a worse deal after blowing up all political capital.
Sometimes money is more attractive than morality. So I guess money is the answer here.
Do you mean the same OpenAI that has a retired U.S. Army General & former director of the NSA (Gen. Nakasone) serving on its board of directors?
um, easy -- everyone has a price. Some of the most highly-paid workers on the planet work there.
Pay me $5M/yr and there are a LOT of things I wouldn't do for $300k.
https://www.levels.fyi/companies/openai/salaries
So using Anthropic’s own words to cover a power play or pulling relationships to see if they could get anthropic to balk at it.
Woolad theyll create the autonomous military robots themselves for that check.
Honestly, the best thing to happen is that someone comes up with a new UI (think claw...like) that everyone starts using instead. A very cute, well integrated system that just works for everyone, has free tier, and has something that the others dont have.
> Do you expect that to work?
Many years ago Tim O'Reilly (of book publishing fame) knew Apple would one day would become really big even though they were a small, niche player in the "PC" space as the time (2000s). How did he know that? By seeing what the 'alpha geeks' were doing: the folks that not just used tech, but were working at companies that were inventing the future. They were the ones where friends and families asked for advice. And the alpha geeks (at the time) were switch to MacOS X and telling their friends and family about it.
* https://www.oreilly.com/tim/archives/rationaledge_interview....
* https://www.wired.com/2006/05/tim-says-watch-alpha-geeks/
There's a good chance that if you're on HN, you're the person in your non-techies social group that many others ask for advice. You can potentially sway many people by your example and your advice.
The morals were just there while it was easy virtue signaling.
Same for almost all Google, Facebook, etc. Prove me wrong, please.
There is more to this story behind the scenes. The government wanted to show power and control over our companies and industries. They didn’t need those terms for any specific utility, they wanted to fight “woke” business that stood up to them.
Supposedly OpenAI had the same terms as Anthropic (according to SamA). Maybe they offered it cheaper and that’s why they agreed. Maybe it’s all the lobbying money from OpenAI that let the government look the other way. Maybe it’s all the PR announcements SamA and Trump do together.
"we put them into our agreement." is strange framing is Altman's tweet. Makes me think the agreement does mention the principles, but doesn't state them as binding rules DoD must follow.
I don't necessarily think he's lying, but there's so much obvious incentive for him to lie here (if only because his employees can save face).
https://www.stilldrinking.org/stop-talking-to-technology-exe...
He doesn't even need to be lying, the comment is vague and contains enough loopholes that it could be true yet meaningless. I explained some that I noticed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47190163
He said human responsibility. Anthropic said human in the loop.
And Anthropic refused to say any lawful purpose would be allowed reportedly.
But regardless of the moral implications, will this improve America’s position on the global stage or further undermine it?
I can also interpret this as Sam and the administration supporting accelerationism while Dario is more measured and wishes to slow things down.
Ultimately, I don't know how much the specific reasons matter. Pete Hegseth must be removed from office, OpenAI must be destroyed for their betrayal of the US public, that's all there is to it.
2) Trump’s son in law (Kushner) has most of his net worth wrapped up in OpenAI.
If true (too lazy to check but I honestly take your word for it), this should probably be bigger news. Not that the outright corruption when it comes to the highest position in the US Government constitutes news anymore, but because it puts the Government’s fight against Anthropic (and supposedly other potential OpenAI competitors) in a new light.