- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has sent out a lengthy internal memo
- Attack OpenAI’s messages about its new agreement with the Pentagon
- Anthropic and Claude may still be in talks with the US government.
If you thought the debate over AI companies’ dealings with the US military was going to die down, think again: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has quite candidly accused rival OpenAI of telling “outright lies” about its dealings with the Pentagon.
Late last week, Anthropic walked away from a new deal with US intelligence, citing security concerns about the use of AI in mass surveillance (especially of domestic citizens) and fully autonomous weapons. In response, US officials and the president himself stated that government agencies would no longer use Anthropic’s AI robot, Claude.
OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman quickly stepped in and announced their own deal with the US military that apparently had “more guardrails” than the one offered to Anthropic. Users were far from convinced about the ethics: in the days since, uninstalls of ChatGPT have increased sharply and Claude has quickly climbed the App Store charts.
In an internal memo (via The Information), Amodei’s response was to question OpenAI’s claims. He calls OpenAI’s overall message “lie” and suggests it include phrases like “security layer” that don’t quite hold up. In Amodei’s view, many of the guarantees OpenAI has provided are “security theater.”
OpenAI is “appeasing employees”
Amodei goes on to say that OpenAI is more concerned about “appeasing employees” than safeguarding the use of AI, and questions the caveat in the Pentagon agreement that mentions “all legal use,” something that can be a gray area when it comes to issues like national surveillance authorizations.
The memo also highlights how AI can be deceived and misused (in the most basic form, simply by lying to it about the nature of the data it processes), while emphasizing Anthropic’s focus on security. The approaches OpenAI is taking here “mostly don’t work,” Amodei says.
OpenAI boss Sam Altman will almost certainly have more to say and has already admitted that OpenAI’s initial announcement was “rushed” and “sloppy.” Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that Anthropic and Claude might be finding a way to get back into a deal with the US military after all, although it’s unclear what the terms would be.
The report doesn’t add much about the latest negotiations, or how they could potentially affect the OpenAI deal, but it appears that the relationship between Anthropic and the US government might not be over yet.
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