OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees Tuesday that his company does not control how the Pentagon uses its artificial intelligence products in military operations. Altman’s claims over OpenAI’s lack of input come amid growing scrutiny over how the military uses AI in warfare and AI activists’ ethics concerns over how their technology will be deployed.
According to the report, Altman told employees, “You do not have the authority to make operational decisions.” bloomberg And cnbc.
“So maybe you think the Iran attack was good and the Venezuela attack was bad. You shouldn’t pay attention to that,” Altman reportedly said.
The AI industry has been embroiled in heated discussions and heated exchanges in recent weeks as the Pentagon demanded that AI companies remove security guardrails on their models to allow a broader range of military applications. There are reportedly AI-enabled systems has already been used In the US military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and in targeting decisions in the war against Iran.
Anthropic, OpenAI’s rival and maker of cloud chatbots, last week declined to comply with the Pentagon over concerns that its models could be used for domestic mass surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth consequently declared the company a “supply-chain risk”, a designation that had never before been used against an American company and which could have caused significant financial harm if formally enacted.
On the same day that Hegseth vowed punitive measures against Anthropic, the Pentagon also announced a deal with OpenAI, which appeared to be aimed at replacing the use of the cloud in military applications. The timing of the deal and concerns that OpenAI had agreed to cross ethical boundaries, which Anthropic rejected, led to both a public and internal employee backlash against OpenAI.
Altman and OpenAI have since tried to emphasize that its technology would be used legally and damage control would be carried out, with Altman admitting that the deal was rushed and that the company had been “opportunistic and reckless”.
Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, described Altman as a “liar” in a memo to employees on Wednesday and accused Altman of “praising Trump in dictatorial style.” Information Informed. “We actually held our red lines with integrity rather than colluding with them to create ‘security theater’ for the benefit of employees (which, I solemnly swear to you, is exactly what everyone at (the Pentagon), Palantir, our political advisors, etc. assumed was the very problem we were trying to solve),” Amodei reportedly wrote.
He also targeted the Pentagon and Donald Trump.
“The real reason (the Pentagon) and the Trump administration don’t like us is that we haven’t donated to Trump (whereas OpenAI/Greg has donated a lot),” he wrote, referring to OpenAI president Greg Brockman, who along with his wife backed Trump to the tune of $25 million.
