[HN Gopher] OpenAI agrees with Dept. of War to deploy models in ...
___________________________________________________________________
OpenAI agrees with Dept. of War to deploy models in their
classified network
https://xcancel.com/sama/status/2027578652477821175
https://fortune.com/2026/02/27/openai-in-talks-with-pentagon...
Author : eoskx
Score : 1316 points
Date : 2026-02-28 02:59 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| verdverm wrote:
| If the "safety stack" (guardrails) bit is true, it's the exact
| opposite of their beef with Anthropic... which is not surprising
| given who's running the US right now.
|
| 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.
| eoskx wrote:
| "Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to
| deploy our models in their classified network.
|
| 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."
| moogly wrote:
| > We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can.
|
| Serve Palestinians volleys of rockets, that is.
| jordanscales wrote:
| This is awkward? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47188473
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| So they agreed to the exact same clauses that Anthropic put
| forward but with OpenAI instead?
|
| 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?
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I'm sure a big donor just used the US gov as a bludgeon to
| destroy their competition
| eclipticplane wrote:
| Is the big donor among us?
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Now that OpenAI is going to be used for mass domestic
| surveillance you can assume Sam Altman is always in the
| room.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| As I understand it, Sam's cofounder at OpenAI donated $25
| million to the Trump 2024 campaign.
|
| As Trump himself likes to say, "Promises made, promises
| kept."
| Jensson wrote:
| Anthropic would probably not renegotiate in a year about the
| principles, while Sam Altman is known to be morally flexible
| so OpenAI will almost surely allow the military to do what
| they want in the future. Sam Altman might even have said
| behind closed doors that these restrictions will be removed
| once the drama has died down.
| small_model wrote:
| What principals do Anthropic have?, they happily build a
| product and acknowledge it will lead to the loss of millions
| of jobs, particularly SWE's first, but shrug and say 'nothing
| we can do, we just build the thing', that will kill a lot of
| people.
| push0ret wrote:
| So they agreed to the same red lines that had earlier led to the
| fallout with Anthropic? Kind of strange.
| fintechie wrote:
| Well you know how it goes... you need to read between the
| lines. I can agree with you on your "principles", but not
| enforce them myself.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Sam saw Anthropic was getting too competitive. So he called his
| buddies in the gov to knock them down a peg.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| For sure, he's been pissed that OpenAI no longer has the
| Mandate of Heaven and Claude is all anyone has been talking
| about since December. (And it's not just an ego thing:
| because OAI isn't profitable yet, they need the hype to keep
| going to raise money on favorable terms, so loss of buzz is
| an existential threat). I absolutely believe that he started
| making calls to try and get buddies in the White House to
| take Anthropic down.
| coliveira wrote:
| That's very possible! In the last few days Anthropic was
| getting a lot of attention, and OpenAI was looking weaker in
| comparison. It seems like a politically coordinated job to
| remove competition.
| lathgan wrote:
| Follow the money. There is a UAE sheik who bought 49% of
| Trump's World Liberty and is involved in OpenAI's Project
| Stargate:
|
| https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/35909013656801
|
| I'm sure more will drop in the coming months.
| harmonic18374 wrote:
| I don't trust Sam to be telling the truth. It would be to his
| benefit to lie about this and make Anthropic look bad, so he of
| course would, even if it's not actually the case.
| Jackson__ wrote:
| Hell, I would have thought it likely that anthropic was doing
| the same thing. Of course that was proven wrong, but for OAI
| I wouldn't even be guessing. This has always been what sama
| does.
| arppacket wrote:
| I bet Sam secretly pledged to DoD that the red lines were only
| temporary, for optics and to calm employees at the all hands
| meeting.
|
| 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.
| coliveira wrote:
| Very possible, double speaking is Sam Altman's specialty.
| fatal94 wrote:
| The fact they were able to strike a deal in the first place
| hours after Anthropic was declared a supply chain risk should
| make this obvious. Their employees are smart people, the only
| way they can reason past this is their compensation.
| foobarqux wrote:
| No, the difference is that the government agrees to no
| "unlawful" use as determined by the government.
|
| Anthropic said that mass surveillance was per se prohibited
| even if the government self-certified that it was lawful.
| fwlr wrote:
| It makes sense if you imagine the real motivation is "make sure
| the AI contracts go to my good friend Sam", and all the red
| line stuff is just a way to pick a fight with Anthropic.
| deaux wrote:
| All OpenAI employees during the board revolt that vouched for
| sama's return are personally responsible.
| swat535 wrote:
| OpenAI employees revolted for their millions worth of stock,
| not for principle.
|
| Anyone thinking they have any virtue is naive.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Is the Pentagon signing a EULA confirming all their data will now
| be used, anonymised, for improving the service?
| wmf wrote:
| Obviously not? You know enterprise customers don't have the
| same EULA as consumers, right?
| robertwt7 wrote:
| How did they agree to the terms that were initially put forward
| by Anthropic but with OpenAI? Surely there's a catch here. Or is
| it just Sam negotiation skill?
| jackyli02 wrote:
| SA is a real weasel lol. Acted like he stood behind Anthropic's
| principles just to announce the deal with DoW a few hours later.
| MGriisser wrote:
| Sam Altman not being consistently candid or truthful would be
| the shock of the century.
| Imnimo wrote:
| I don't see how OpenAI employees who have signed the We Will Not
| Be Divided letter can continue their employment there in light of
| this. Surely if OpenAI had insisted upon the same things that
| Anthropic had, the government would not have signed this
| agreement. The only plausible explanation is that there is an
| understanding that OpenAI will not, in practice, enforce the red
| lines.
| tempaccount420 wrote:
| Didn't the safety-conscious employees already leave when OpenAI
| fired Sam Altman and then re-hired him?
|
| In my mind the only people left are those who are there for the
| stocks.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| In all seriousness, what's the average tenure at OpenAI and
| how much of the company in March 2026 was even around for
| that?
| lioeters wrote:
| It's comforting to know that some of the brightest minds of
| our generation are going to work at OpenAI, then quitting a
| few months later horrified, only to post a short mysterious
| tweet warning everyone of the dangers ahead. So much for
| alignment and serving humanity.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| And they will continue to work for Google / Meta et al to
| use novel AI techniques to sell us more and better ads,
| only to quit a few years later to do more soul searching
| where everything went wrong /s
| DANmode wrote:
| Review the signers https://notdivided.org
| pluc wrote:
| They've been deleted. For obvious reasons. You want to take
| a stand but you don't want to stop working for the people
| who do the things you don't want to do. It's all so very
| american. I'll put my name on but if it doesn't work remove
| my name so I don't get into trouble ok? Home of the brave.
| UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote:
| What are you on about? The names are still there.
| bobanrocky wrote:
| And h1 slaves
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Nah. It's _possible_ that the agreement still supports the
| required terms.
|
| 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.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Maybe Sam Altman said nicer things about Donald Trump. Maybe
| he promised that he would not revoke their API keys when
| Hegseth directs the military to seize ballots. Maybe he's
| jockeying for position to take over the government when AGI
| hits.
|
| 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.
| toufka wrote:
| 1) Another OpenAI cofounder (Brockman) gave Trump's
| superPAC the largest ever individual donation of $25m.
|
| 2) Trump's son in law (Kushner) has most of his net worth
| wrapped up in OpenAI.
| m_ke wrote:
| don't forget that Sama is a Thiel protege
| paganel wrote:
| > 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.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's this simple: Trump is a criminal. Larry Ellison is his
| pal. Sam Altman has a huge deal for cloud services from
| Oracle. Trump is using the DoD budget to backstop Ellison's
| business.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| Interesting thesis.
|
| But regardless of the moral implications, will this improve
| America's position on the global stage or further undermine
| it?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| For better or worse, outright nationalization of military
| related companies is common on a global scale. I plan to
| do my best to ensure this is a domestic catastrophe, and
| I hope we'll succeed, but I don't expect other countries
| to care much about varying levels of regime alignment
| between two billionaire American defense contractors.
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| Attempting to kneecap the breakout front runner of the
| major American AI companies to ensure the shittier,
| politically compliant one wins in the short term? Gee I
| wonder.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| Anthropic is great but not the undisputed front runner.
|
| I can also interpret this as Sam and the administration
| supporting accelerationism while Dario is more measured
| and wishes to slow things down.
| coliveira wrote:
| Only if you think that crime will somehow improve
| America. My opinion is that this is leading to its
| collapse, no matter how "powerful" they look.
| coliveira wrote:
| This is pretty much on the right take on it, although it's
| much more than that. It's very clear at this point,
| especially the first conclusion, but people insist in
| looking to the other side.
| harmonic18374 wrote:
| I prescribe literally zero truth value to what Sam says. He
| will say whatever he needs to get ahead. It is honestly
| irritating to me that you and many others here seem to
| implicitly assume his messages are correlated with truth,
| doing his social engineering work for him, as if his word
| should adjust your priors even slightly.
|
| 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).
| chamomeal wrote:
| Your comment reminded me that a blog post. It's by the same
| guy that wrote "programming sucks". I've been sharing it a
| lot recently lol
|
| https://www.stilldrinking.org/stop-talking-to-technology-
| exe...
| dataflow wrote:
| > I don't necessarily think he's lying
|
| 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
| sesqu wrote:
| I'm not sure if I'd go down to zero, but he _did_ get fired
| from OpenAI for lying.
| harmonic18374 wrote:
| And fired from YC for lying. And lied to investors about
| how many Loopt employees he had. And lied about having
| 100x the actual number of users when he sold it. And lied
| to employees about the Microsoft deal. And lied to his
| safety team.
| Imnimo wrote:
| None of those explanations are compatible with the pledge of
| solidarity in the We Will Not Be Divided letter.
| sigmar wrote:
| >Supposedly OpenAI had the same terms
|
| "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.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > Supposedly OpenAI had the same terms as Anthropic
| (according to SamA).
|
| He said human responsibility. Anthropic said human in the
| loop.
|
| And Anthropic refused to say any lawful purpose would be
| allowed reportedly.
| coliveira wrote:
| Yes, what is implied in this episode is that all big companies
| that do AI development or provide computing for Ai are now
| signing for these very shady uses of their technologies.
| granzymes wrote:
| >Surely if OpenAI had insisted upon the same things that
| Anthropic had, the government would not have signed this
| agreement.
|
| 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.
| davidw wrote:
| They seem moderately competent at doing blatant corruption (
| https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/official-trump/ , Qatari
| jet, etc...). See jeffbee's comment below.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| While that thought crossed my mind, someone in a sub thread
| of parent comment made a point: OpenAI made a statement about
| how "We insisted this be not be used in those ways and DoD
| totally says they won't". Which sounds to me like they ceded
| any hard terms oand conditions and are letting the DoD use it
| in "any lawful means" which is what Anthropic didn't stand
| for.
| arugulum wrote:
| > Surely if OpenAI had insisted upon the same things that
| Anthropic had, the government would not have signed this
| agreement.
|
| 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."
| newguytony wrote:
| Good ole Sammy has never lied
| arugulum wrote:
| If your starting position is already that Sam Altman lies
| about everything that doesn't fit your preconceived
| positions, that doesn't seem like a very useful meaningful
| position to update.
| lioeters wrote:
| The company started with a lie, it's in the name.
| johnbellone wrote:
| Yes.
| fooker wrote:
| Unrelated, but want to buy a bridge?
|
| You could recoup your investment in a year by collecting
| toll. Expedited financing available on good credit!
| tomhow wrote:
| Please don't do this here.
| WD-42 wrote:
| I'm sure it's a matter of interpretation. Anthropic thinks
| the DoW's demands will lead to mass surveillance and auto-
| kill bots. The DoW probably disagrees with that
| interpretation, and all OpenAI needs to do is agree with the
| DoW.
|
| My bet is that what the DoW wants is pretty clearly tied to
| mass surveillance and kill-bots. Altman is a snake.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Why do you choose to call it the "DoW"? Its official name
| is the Department of Defense, it was titled that way by
| Congress and only Congress can change it. What is your
| motivation in using a term that the current administration
| has started to use? Do you also use the Gulf of America
| when referrring to the body of water that defines the
| southern edge of the USA?
| thejazzman wrote:
| Don't you think it is more to-the-point to call it what
| it is and what the people running it with, i'll bet
| everything i have, absolute immunity, are doing and
| intend to do with it?
|
| It's like the one honest thing they've done
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| It is "honest" in the historical sense, certainly.
|
| 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.
| matsemann wrote:
| It's the term used by Sam Altman in the announcement.
| Maybe aim your anger there, to someone knowingly helping
| them in their attempt to turn the department into one of
| aggression.
| j_maffe wrote:
| If someone is calling themselves a warmonger, they should
| be called a warmonger.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| 100%. But the names of US agencies are not the names of
| people, and not determined by individuals, even the
| warmongers.
| charcircuit wrote:
| The president changed it back to its original name with
| an executive order. The administration did not just start
| spontaneously using it.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The president has no authority to do this. Federal
| departments and agencies are named by Congress, and even
| the Republicans in Congress have shown no interest in
| formalizing this.
| herewulf wrote:
| No, the Department of War is the former name of the
| Department of the _Army_ and nothing else. DoD is a new
| creation that includes the Army, historic Department of
| the Navy, and the other, post-WW2, new services.
|
| "Changing it back" is completely ahistoric.
| calgoo wrote:
| Exactly this! Just like the Gulf of Mexico is still
| called the Gulf of Mexico, if we just ignore his
| ramblings and continue calling the department of defense,
| we undermine his whole point. If we fall for all their
| crap and just accept it, then we loose in the end. Any
| resistance to a Fascist government is good resistance.
| Anything that makes their life's a little shittier is
| good. Better that they go around having tantrums about
| how they renamed it but no one is paying attention.
| IsTom wrote:
| The only more fitting name currently would be Department
| of Peace
| tombert wrote:
| Not that this will matter on any individual level, but I
| canceled my ChatGPT subscription after this.
|
| I didn't have much of an opinion of Altman before but now I
| think he's a grifting douche.
| IsTom wrote:
| > The DoW probably disagrees with that interpretation
|
| Or perhaps, maybe, just a little maybe, DoW is getting
| absolutely excited about mass surveillance and kill-bots?
| propagandist wrote:
| Human responsibility is not the same as human decision
| making.
|
| 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.
| nick486 wrote:
| >Human responsibility is not the same as human decision
| making.
|
| 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?
| propagandist wrote:
| That's precisely how I read it. They're weasel words
| delivered by the master weasel himself.
| layer8 wrote:
| The difference is that Anthropic wanted to reserve the right
| to judge when the red lines are crossed, while OpenAI will
| defer to the DoD and its policies for that. In both cases,
| the two parties can claim to agree on the principles, but
| when push comes to shove, who decides on whether the
| principles are violated differs.
| outside1234 wrote:
| This. Sam is going to pretend they aren't going to use it
| for that because his company is collapsing in losses. He
| will never audit.
|
| Probably also got assurances about a bailout when OpenAI
| collapses.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > The difference is that Anthropic wanted to reserve the
| right to judge when the red lines are crossed, while OpenAI
| will defer to the DoD and its policies for that.
|
| You learned this where?
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm reading between the lines of the involved parties'
| various statements, but there's also this:
| https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > I'm reading between the lines of the involved parties'
| various statements
|
| You should have said this.
|
| >
| https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230
|
| Thank you.
| layer8 wrote:
| It was pretty clear from Anthropic's and Hegseth's
| statements that they didn't disagree on the two
| exclusions, but on who would be the arbiter on those. 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.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| From the referenced tweet;
|
| _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.
| nullocator wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| eecc wrote:
| And that's where the authoritarian in you is shining
| through.
|
| 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
| credit_guy wrote:
| > Amodei is the type of person who thinks he can tell the
| US government what they can and can't do.
|
| 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]: >
| Powerful AI makes it possible to assemble this scattered,
| individually innocuous data into a comprehensive picture
| of any person's life--automatically and at massive scale.
|
| 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
| pseudalopex wrote:
| > It was pretty clear from Anthropic's and Hegseth's
| statements that they didn't disagree on the two
| exclusions, but on who would be the arbiter on those.
|
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| I don't understand your first comment. At that point,
| Altman's tweet didn't exist yet, and is immaterial to the
| reading of Anthropic's and Hegseth's statements.
|
| 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...".
| remarkEon wrote:
| Seems Anthropic did not understand the questions they were
| asked. From the WaPo:
|
| >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 Nicolas 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.wash
| i...
| lukan wrote:
| "It's the kind of situation where technological might and
| speed could be critical to detection and counterstrike"
|
| 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.
| quaunaut wrote:
| Are you serious? This is the kind of thing you'd ask a
| clarifying question on and get information back
| immediately. Further, the huge overreaction from Hegseth
| shows this _is_ a fundamental disagreement.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The flip side of "Hegseth is an unqualified drunk", a
| position which I've always held and still maintain, is
| that he very well might crash out over nothing instead of
| asking clarifying questions or suggesting obvious
| compromises. This is the same guy who recalled the entire
| general staff to yell at them about the warrior mindset.
| Not an excuse for any of this, but I do think the precise
| nature of the badness matters.
| wraptile wrote:
| > 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?
|
| I'm sorry but lol
| retsibsi wrote:
| Is there any reason at all to believe the account of the
| unnamed "defence official"? Whatever your position on
| this administration, you know that it lies like the rest
| of us breathe. With a denial from the other side and a
| lack of any actual evidence, why should I give it non-
| negligible credence?
| sillyfluke wrote:
| It is bizarre. I like how, "past performance predicts
| future performance" is supposed to apply to founders and
| companies but completely disregarded for a two term
| president and admin, as if we have no idea how they will
| operate in the future.
|
| 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?
| remarkEon wrote:
| This is not what I said, and not what the WaPo quoted.
| We're talking about the CEO, who is shall we say
| unfamiliar with war making, getting asked a hypothetical
| about how the product he sells would perform in a first
| strike scenario, and he reportedly gives what is an
| _entirely legalese_ answer. Yes, I consider this a likely
| possibility. It sounds exactly like how someone would
| respond if they 've been swimming in legal memos for
| months.
| remarkEon wrote:
| Anonymous sources are bad again. Glad we could clear that
| up.
| twistedpair wrote:
| > could the military use Anthropic's Claude AI system to
| help shoot it down?
|
| 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.
| khalic wrote:
| Anthropic has safeguards baked in the model, this is the only
| way to make sur it's harder for the DOJ to misuse it. A pinky
| swear from the DoD means nothing
| outside1234 wrote:
| All of us can act too. Stop using the OpenAI models. Stop using
| the app. Design in other models no matter what. Screw these
| guys.
| foo12bar wrote:
| Do you expect that to work?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| No, I expect you to die, Mr. Bond.
| komali2 wrote:
| It's a commoditized market so it doesn't hurt to try.
| calgoo wrote:
| Its about network effect - The biggest issue is that
| ChatGPT is a household name like Google at this point.
| Everyone and their grandma knows it or are learning about
| it, while Claude is very well known in the tech circles.
| Getting tech people to switch is relativity easy (ignoring
| Enterprise contracts), but getting everyone else to switch
| is going to be very slow.
|
| 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.
| throw0101c wrote:
| >> _All of us can act too. Stop using the OpenAI models.
| Stop using the app. Design in other models no matter what.
| Screw these guys._
|
| > _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_intervi
| ew....
|
| * 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.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| > _The only plausible explanation is that there is an
| understanding that OpenAI will not, in practice, enforce the
| red lines._
|
| 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?
| 2snakes wrote:
| I think it is like a loyalty test to an authority above the law
| (executive immunity) in order to do business. "If we tell you
| to do so, you may do something you thought was right or wrong."
| It is like an induction into a faction and the way the
| decisions could be made. Doesn't necessarily mean anything
| about "in practice in the future", just that the cybernetic
| override is there tacitly. If the authority thinks they can get
| away with something, they will provide protection for
| consequences too. Some people more equal than others when it
| comes to justice for all, etc. There are probably alternative
| styles for group decision making...
| tedsanders wrote:
| I'm an OpenAI employee and I'll go out on a limb with a public
| comment. I agree AI shouldn't be used for mass surveillance or
| autonomous weapons. I also think Anthropic has been treated
| terribly and has acted admirably. My understanding is that the
| OpenAI deal disallows domestic mass surveillance and autonomous
| weapons, 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). Given this
| understanding, I don't see why I should quit. If it turns out
| that the deal is being misdescribed or that it won't be
| enforced, I can see why I should quit, but so far I haven't
| seen any evidence that's the case.
| mathisfun123 wrote:
| > Given this understanding, I don't see why I should quit.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning
| pear01 wrote:
| Why would you believe that? If that were the case what was
| the issue with Anthropic even about?
|
| You, and your colleagues, should resign.
| permo-w wrote:
| You tell me why an employee would believe something
| convenient to them continuing to receive their paycheck
| gizzlon wrote:
| Life is more than a paycheck. We should raise the bar a
| little IMO. Turning down money for good reasons is not
| something extreme we should only expect from saints.
| komali2 wrote:
| Imo the more ethical thing is obstructionism. Twitter's
| takeover showed it's pretty easy to find True Believer
| sycophants to hire. Better to play the part while secretly
| finding ways to sabotage.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| That quote comes to mind...It is difficult to get a man to
| understand something when his salary depends upon his not
| understanding it.
|
| Obviously nothing is going to make Teddy quit his cushy
| OpenAI job.
| thunky wrote:
| > 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.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Who still does business with open ai and why? They are
| usually 5th or sixth in the benchmarks bracketed below
| and above by models that cost less. This has been the
| case for quite some time. Glm is out for us government
| purposes I'd imagine, but if google agrees to the same
| terms I don't see why the us government would use open ai
| anyway. If google disagrees it would be rather confusing
| given the other invasions of privacy they have
| facilitated, but if they do then using open ai would make
| sense as all that would be left is grok...
| phs318u wrote:
| Thank you for responding. Everyone wants to think they will
| "do the right thing" when their own personal Rubicon is
| challenged. In practice, so many factors are at play, not
| least of which are the other people you may be responsible
| for. The calculus of balancing those differing imperatives is
| only straightforward for those that have never faced this
| squarely. I've been marched out of jobs twice for standing up
| for what I believed to be right at the time. Am still
| literally blacklisted (much to the surprise of various
| recruiters) at a major bank here 8 years after the fact. I
| can't imagine that the threat of being blacklisted from a
| whole raft of companies contracting with a known vindictive
| regime would make the decision easier.
| baconner wrote:
| Respectfully, it's very hard to see how anyone could look at
| what just happened and come to the conclusion that one
| company ends up classed a "supply chain risk" while another
| agrees the the same terms that led to that. Either the terms
| are looser, they're not going to be enforced, or there's
| another reason for the loud attempt to blacklist Anthropic.
| It's very difficult to see how you could take this at face
| value in any case. If it is loose terms or a wink agreement
| to not check in on enforcement you're never going to be told
| that. We can imagine other scenerios where the terms stated
| were not the real reason for the blacklisting, but it's a
| real struggle (at least for me) to find an explanation for
| this deal that doesn't paint OpenAI in a very ethically
| questionable light.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| anthropic has nothing but a contract to enforce what is
| appropriate usage of their models. there are no safety
| rails, they disabled their standard safety systems
|
| 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
| nawgz wrote:
| Source?
| losvedir wrote:
| Huh, that's an interesting and new perspective. I'd love
| to know what you mean by safety systems, and what OpenAI
| can do that Anthropic can't.
| mpalmer wrote:
| This is entirely nonsense.
|
| - 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
| tedsanders wrote:
| I agree it makes little sense, and I think if all players
| were rational it never would have played out this way. My
| understanding is that there are other reasons (i.e., beyond
| differing red lines) that made the OpenAI deal more
| palatable, but unfortunately the information shared with me
| has not been made public so I won't comment on specifics. I
| know that's unsatisfying, but I hope it serves as some very
| mild evidence that it's not all a big fat lie.
| DavidSJ wrote:
| OpenAI should not be agreeing to any contract with DOD
| under these circumstances of Anthropic being falsely
| labeled a supply chain risk.
| edoceo wrote:
| Friend, this reads like that situation where your
| paycheck prevents you from seeing clearly - I forget the
| exact quote. Sam doesn't play a straight game and neither
| does the administration - there are more than a few
| examples.
| komali2 wrote:
| Never try to convince someone of something they're paid
| to not believe.
| davidmr wrote:
| Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to
| understand something, when his salary depends on his not
| understanding it"
| az226 wrote:
| Your ballooned unvested equity package is preventing you
| from seeing the difference between "our offering/deal is
| better" and "designated supply chain risk and threatening
| all companies who do business with the government to stop
| using Anthropic or will be similarly dropped" (which is
| well past what the designation limits). It's easier being
| honest.
| tedsanders wrote:
| The supply chain risk stuff is bogus. Anthropic is a
| great, trustworthy company, and no enemy of America. I
| genuinely root for Anthropic, because its success
| benefits consumers and all the charities that Anthropic
| employees have pledged equity toward.
|
| 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.
| intothemild wrote:
| We all know who's lying... The guy who's track record is
| constantly lying.. your boss.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Ouch but true - he is the Elon of AI.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Isn't Elon the Elon of AI?
| slg wrote:
| >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.
|
| 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.
| lsaferite wrote:
| Not "asking for them", insisting the already agreed to
| terms be respected.
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _It 's just tough to believe the government would
| concede so much ground on this deal so quickly._
|
| Well... TACO.
| helpfulclippy wrote:
| I'm skeptical because while I can totally believe that
| the deal presently contains restrictive language, I can
| totally believe that OpenAI will abandon its ethical
| principles to create wealth for the people who control
| it. Sort of like how they used to be a non-profit that
| was, allegedly, about creating an Open AI, and now
| they're sabotaging the entire world's supply of RAM to
| discourage competition to their closed, paid model.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Exactly this. Looks like we had the same conclusion. I
| really am inclined to believe that OpenAI given that its
| IPO'ing (soon?) would be absolutely decimated and
| employees would be leaving left and right if they
| proclaimed that, yes OpenAI is selling DOD autonomous
| killing machines.
|
| 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.
| albedoa wrote:
| > One thing I hope we can agree on is that it would be
| good if the contract (or its relevant portions) is made
| public
|
| 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!
| miltonlost wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The problem is, the vague safeguards are not worth
| anything.
|
| "we will comply with US law" The problem is, the US
| government does not actually comply with US law.
| plandis wrote:
| That's not evidence. You're effectively saying "trust me
| bro" without a shred of proof to backup your claims.
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| I agree with what you're saying, but given the egos
| involved in the current admin there's a practical
| interpretation:
|
| 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.
| juggle-anyhow wrote:
| Well at least we know now that the department of war is
| less capable than before. All because the big man shit
| his pants while Anthropic was in view.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >5. Trump sees a political reason
|
| Like, they haven't paid me a bribe? That seems to be the
| only "politics" at play in Trumps head.
| petre wrote:
| Nah, they just respectfully said no to their face, which
| prompted him to make a big threat display and post
| another message with caps and exclamation signs on social
| media.
| trickstra wrote:
| It's all a test of loyalty, crucial for fascist regimes.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| That is pretty optimistic, i hope it is true, and just a
| miss-understanding.
|
| 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.
| outside1234 wrote:
| These people are drunk on power. They have been running
| around dictating things to everyone so for someone to
| push back is pretty novel _and_ it will inspire (I hope)
| other people to push back.
| skepticATX wrote:
| One explanation is that this is effectively a quid pro quo,
| given Brockman's enormous financial support of the current
| president.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Yep, theoretically it could just be oligarchic corruption
| and not institutional insanity at the highest levels of
| the government. What a reassuring relief it would be to
| believe that.
| monooso wrote:
| I agree with your assessment, but given the past behaviour
| of this administration I wouldn't be shocked to discover
| that the real reason is "petulance".
| khazhoux wrote:
| It's obvious retaliation, and will be struck down by the
| courts.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Maybe, within the next 5 years.
| manmal wrote:
| Are you saying that everything so far in this
| administration has been 100% rational?
| Rebuff5007 wrote:
| > it's very hard to see how anyone could look at what just
| happened
|
| I think what you are missing is their annual comp with two
| commas in it.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| This, for that check theyll be building the autonomous
| robots themselves, saying "theyre food delivery robots,
| thats not a gun that a drink dispenser!"
| cheonn638 wrote:
| > theyre food delivery robots, thats not a gun that a
| drink dispenser!"
|
| 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.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| True that - everybody has a price.
| xphos wrote:
| I mean this is not actually true and the statement
| justifies and vindicates those that do sell out by saying
| of course anyone would. There are countless marytr for
| religion, politics, and other things.
|
| A better way is to say you can always find a cheap
| sellout at least than the morally dammed cannot claim
| equality of belief
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| You mean like all of the religious leaders who are
| actively supporting a defending a three time married
| adulterer? You'll have to excuse my skepticism of the
| morality of "the moral majority".
| nawgz wrote:
| Religion is and always has been about control... it
| strikes me as exceedingly naive to be surprised the
| church is backing a pedophile, have you literally ever
| read any history of any kind?
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| I am the last person to be surprised at the corruption of
| any large organization.
| mr_mitm wrote:
| How many?
| achierius wrote:
| As many as are at OpenAI about a month from now.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| The world needs a nuclear war to just eliminate 99% of
| human life and just start over.
| tclancy wrote:
| Same answer the last ten thousand edge lords who said
| this got: you first.
| nilamo wrote:
| And all the survivors die from radiation? This must be a
| joke
| duzer65657 wrote:
| but you're part of the 1%, right?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Either that or a cockroach.
| beanjuiceII wrote:
| 1,000,000 ? lol gimme 200,000 and I'm your trigger puller
| wackget wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I will respond with a personal, related story. I was
| living in Hongkong when "democracy fell" in the late
| 2010s / early 2020s. It was depressing, and I wanted to
| leave. (I did later.) I was trying to explain to my
| parents (and relatives) why most highly skilled foreign
| workers just didn't care. I said: "Imagine you told a
| bunch of people in 1984 that they could move to Moscow to
| open a local office for a wealthy international
| corporation and get paid big money, like 500K+ in today's
| dollars. Fat expat package is included. How many people
| would take it? Most."
|
| 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.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| I don't cringe because it's for dramatic/narrative
| effect. It's the same reason the crew of the Enterprise
| regularly beam into dangerous locations rather than
| sending a semi-autonomous drone. Or that despite having
| intelligent machines their operations are often very
| manual, as it is on many science fiction shows. The
| audience (if they think about it) realises this is not
| realistic and understands that the vast majority of our
| exploration would be done by unmanned/automated vessels.
| But that wouldn't be very interesting.
|
| Other universes take it further - Warhammer 40k often
| features combatants fighting with melee weapons. Rule of
| cool and all that.
| collabs wrote:
| For today's lucky ten thousand, this essay was previously
| featured on HN
|
| https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted
|
| Don't get distracted
| yaur wrote:
| Back in 1960 us early detection systems mistook the moon
| for a massive nuclear first strike with 99.9% certainty.
| With a fully autonomous system the world would have
| burned.
| lazide wrote:
| Hey, with expected stock payout - tres commas!
|
| Shit, I wonder if I still have any of those 'tres commas
| club' t-shirts lying around?
| brandall10 wrote:
| When the genius of Upton Sinclair and Russ Hanneman come
| together so eloquently.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Lets be real one comma is enough for most Americans to
| flee their own humanity.
| az226 wrote:
| And Sam is a habitual liar.
| jdiaz97 wrote:
| He literally just got community noted for lying. So much
| for a non-profit CEO or whatever it is now.
| kotaKat wrote:
| And an abuser, but they keep covering that one up.
| abustamam wrote:
| Are you talking about his sister?
|
| 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.
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| > one company ends up classed a "supply chain risk" while
| another agrees the the same terms that led to that
|
| 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.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Or corruption, in which Trump/Hegseth are getting a
| kickback from OpenAI, but giving the money to Anthropic
| would be "worthless" to them.
| willis936 wrote:
| >or there's another reason for the loud attempt to
| blacklist Anthropic
|
| 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.
| readitalready wrote:
| As an OpenAI employee, quitting wouldn't be a problem, as
| you have a much higher chance of being successful after
| quitting than anyone else. You could go to any VC and they
| would fund you.
| onion2k wrote:
| This isn't even close to true. VCs aren't silly, and it's
| not the 2010-2015 days of free money any more. Having a
| big company on your resume is not enough to land your
| seed round. You need a product, traction, and real money
| revenue in most cases.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I mean, even if that's the case Facebook was hiring 100
| Million$ just a few months ago though even poaching from
| OpenAI and I do think that these employees will always
| have an easier time getting a decent job offer from major
| companies in general as well. They may or may not be
| making the same money but, I do think that their morals
| have to be priced in as well.
| onion2k wrote:
| Getting a job offer is _very_ different to raising a
| funding round.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Yes I agree, I don't know the current VC market so I am
| not gonna comment about that but my point was that the
| OpenAI employees would still be considerably well off
| even if they switch jobs.
|
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Oh no, principles with a price... what will they think of
| next. Obviously principles _only_ matter when there is a
| price attached.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _while another agrees the the same terms that led to
| that_
|
| 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.
| DennisP wrote:
| And unless GP has a security clearance, they can't know for
| sure what OpenAI is allowing on classified networks.
| ukblewis wrote:
| They aren't the same terms. You are clearly an enemy bot or
| an uneducated fool. OpenAI has agreed to mass surveillance
| of those who are not Americans. Anthropic refused. OpenAI's
| term was a restriction of surveillance not to be on
| Americans
| johnbellone wrote:
| You believe who ever said that?
| MattyRad wrote:
| Yeah, agreed. I probably wasn't going to delete my OpenAI
| account (ala the link that is also being upvoted on HN), it
| just seemed like a hassle vs ceasing to use OpenAI. But
| when the staff at OpenAI employ mental gymnastics,
| selective hearing, willful ignorance, or plain ignorance to
| justify compliance with manmade horrors, I think it's
| probably important to vote with our feet.
| RandomTisk wrote:
| There's a critical mass of Trump Derangement Syndrome in
| SV, as this site exemplifies almost daily. The amount of
| vitriol and hatred spewed here is not healthy, nor are
| those who spew it. It kills rational debate, nuance and
| leads to foolish choices like someone cutting off their
| nose to spite their face as the old saying goes.
| pnut wrote:
| The president of the United States sets the tone that
| hated without reason or explanation is the way the system
| works now. Belligerence and power are the currency.
|
| 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.
| topheroo wrote:
| > Cope and cognitive dissonance
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Did Sam Altman say that he wouldn't allow ChatGPT to be used
| for fully autonomous weapons? (Not quite the same as "human
| responsibility for use of force".)
|
| 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.
| Barbing wrote:
| Does he do employee town halls where they could ask?
| scarmig wrote:
| > you'll never find altman saying anything like "our
| agreement specifically says chatgpt will never be used for
| fully autonomous weapons"
|
| 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.)
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| They specifically said they never agreed to let the DoD
| use anthropic for fully autonomous weapons. They said
| "Two such use cases have never been included in our
| contracts with the Department of War, and we believe they
| should not be included now: Mass domestic surveillance
| [...] Fully autonomous weapons"
|
| 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.
| unfunco wrote:
| Dario said in an interview with CBS that they're not
| against fully autonomous weapons but their technology is
| there yet:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPTNHrq_4LU&t=17m47s
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| Not sure how that's relevant. I never said Dario was
| taking an ethical stand. I said they did not agree for
| Claude to be used for fully autonomous weapons. Now,
| compare that to OpenAI, whose agreement does allow fully
| autonomous weapons.
| gizzlon wrote:
| > it isn't a moral stance so much as a pragmatic one
|
| Agreed, the moral stance is saying no to DoJ and the US
| government
| khalic wrote:
| You're not overanalyzing anything, you're using critical
| thinking dissecting company communications. Kudos
| bogtog wrote:
| Mr. Less-than-Consistently-Candid strikes again
| retornam wrote:
| I have a bridge to Brooklyn to sell you if you believe this.
|
| 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.
| throwawaywd89e wrote:
| "AI shouldn't be used for mass surveillance or autonomous
| weapons". The statement from OpenAI virtually guarantees that
| the intention is to use it for mass surveillance and
| autonomous weapons. If this wasn't the intention them the
| qualifier "domestic" wouldn't be used, and they would be
| talking about "human in the loop" control of autonomous
| weapons, not "human responsibility" which just means there's
| someone willing to stand up and say, "yep I take
| responsibility for the autonomous weapon systems actions",
| which lets be honest is the thinnest of thin safety
| guarantees.
| kaashif wrote:
| Anthropic is deemed a betrayer and a supply chain risk for
| actually enforcing their principles.
|
| 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...
| trvz wrote:
| You may have missed that no single word said or written by
| any of the current US government's members can be believed.
| scarmig wrote:
| Why do you suppose OpenAI's deal led to a contract, while
| Anthropic's deal (ostensibly containing identical terms) gets
| it not only booted but declared a supply chain risk?
| segmondy wrote:
| You can't be this naive?
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| His point reeks of cope. But making a large amount of money
| would make anyone dumb, deaf, and blind. Also, I give a
| _little_ leeway to people who are employees without
| executive decision-making power, as they do stand to have a
| lot to lose in situations like this.
| segmondy wrote:
| It's probably how they are coping with the cognitive
| dissonance. I certainly feel for them, I don't know that
| I could easily walk away from a big pay package either
| without backup options when I have family to support and
| I'm not near retirement.
| tfehring wrote:
| (Disclosure, I'm a former OpenAI employee and current
| shareholder.)
|
| 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
| spondyl wrote:
| Jeremy Lewin's tweet referenced that "all lawful use" is
| the particular term that seems to be a particular sticking
| point.
|
| 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...
| az226 wrote:
| The term lawful use is a joke to the current
| administration when they go after senators for sedition
| when reminding government employees to not carry out
| unlawful orders. It's all so twisted.
| estearum wrote:
| To be clear, the sticking point is _actually_ that the
| DoD signed a deal with Anthropic a few months ago that
| had an Acceptable Use Policy which, like all policies, is
| narrower than the absolute outer bounds of statutory
| limitations.
|
| DoD is now trying to strongarm Anthropic into changing
| the deal that _they already signed!_
| syllogism wrote:
| I don't understand how any sort of deal is defensible in
| the circumstances.
|
| 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?
| xpe wrote:
| This is wise analysis. To summarize: appeasement of the
| Trump administration is a losing strategy. You won't get
| what you want and you'll get dragged down in the process.
| duzer65657 wrote:
| did we really need all this? Didn't the experiences with
| Ivy League Universities alreay prove it all out?
| WarmWash wrote:
| From a level headed outside perspective
|
| 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.
| GorbachevyChase wrote:
| I don't know why more people don't see this. It's a
| matter of providing strong guarantees of reliability of
| the product. There is already mass surveillance. There is
| already life taking without proper oversight.
| WarmWash wrote:
| I think it's a bit more nuance than that. The government
| (however good or bad, just bear with me) already has
| oversight mechanisms and already has laws in place to
| prevent mass surveillance and policy about autonomous
| killing.
|
| 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.
| syllogism wrote:
| If you think a blue government would even consider
| threatening to falsely accuse a company of being a
| supply-chain threat in order to gain leverage in a
| contract negotiation, you're insane. There's nothing
| remotely normal about this, it's not something you see in
| any western democracy
| WarmWash wrote:
| >Definitely with less mud slinging though.
| syllogism wrote:
| Government's free to not like the terms and go with
| another provider. That's whatever.
|
| 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?
| xpe wrote:
| I'd like to see smart anonymous ways for people to
| cryptographically prove their claims. Who wants to help
| find or build such an attestation system?
|
| 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.
| tedd4u wrote:
| `yes | killbot -model openai`
| nullocator wrote:
| I don't know you, so maybe you're actually for real and
| speaking on good faith here but honestly this and your other
| responses in this thread read exactly like "...salary depends
| on not understanding"
| mmanfrin wrote:
| You can make blood money but you have to be aware it's blood
| money. Don't delude yourself in to thinking you work for an
| ethical or moral company.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| Aside from that unlikely read, this deal was still used as a
| pressure point on Anthropic, there's absolutely no way OpenAI
| was not used as a stick to hit with during negotiations.
|
| What is your red line?
| mattalex wrote:
| Assuming this is real: Why do you think anthropic was put on
| what is essentially an "enemy of the state" list and openai
| didn't?
|
| 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.
| popalchemist wrote:
| Why would you trust anything out of Sam's mouth? He's a
| sociopath. Is that lost on you?
| vultour wrote:
| The comment perfectly exemplifies the kind of person that
| would work at OpenAI. Government AI drones could be
| executing citizens in the streets but they'd still find
| some sort of cope why it's not a problem. They'll keep
| moving the goalposts as long as the money keeps coming.
| latexr wrote:
| > My understanding is that the OpenAI deal disallows domestic
| mass surveillance and autonomous weapons
|
| And you believe the US government, _let alone the current
| one_ will respect that? Why? Is it naivete 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.
| q3k wrote:
| Coward.
| jakeydus wrote:
| Sometimes brevity is the heart of wit or whatever the line
| is.
| make3 wrote:
| insane cope
| curiousgal wrote:
| This is not meant as a personal attack but this has got to be
| the most naive thing I've read.
| vimda wrote:
| "domestic" "mass" surveillance, two words that can be
| stretched so thin they basically invalidate the whole term.
| Mass surveillance on other countries? Guess that's fine.
| Surveillance on just a couple of cities that happen to be
| resisting the regime? Well, it's not _mass_ surveillance,
| just a couple of cities!
| bambax wrote:
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
| his salary depends on his not understanding it."
| Nekorosu wrote:
| I won't trust a word coming from Sam Altman's mouth until I
| see official signed documents (which I won't).
| johnbellone wrote:
| You should've stopped at don't trust a word out of his
| mouth.
| leptons wrote:
| >OpenAI deal disallows domestic mass surveillance
|
| 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.
| virtualritz wrote:
| Giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming [1] does not
| play a role in your thinking:
|
| 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
| jdiaz97 wrote:
| Scam Altman already got community noted btw
| mda wrote:
| I can totally see why you should quit, but we see different
| things apparently.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Right beautifying lies are always going to head in the
| direction of doing whats self interested.
| syllogism wrote:
| You should quit because the only reasonable thing for your
| leadership to have done is to refuse to sign any agreement
| with DoW whatsoever while it's attempting to strongarm
| Anthropic in this fashion.
|
| 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?
| wjekkekene wrote:
| What a joke
| sensanaty wrote:
| Assuming this isn't a troll and you really think this, you
| should at least have the cojones to admit you're taking the
| blood money instead of trying to pretzel the truth so hard
| that you just look like a moron instead.
| _heimdall wrote:
| My understanding is that OpenAI's deal, and the deal others
| are signing, implicitly prevents the use of LLMs for mass
| domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons because
| today one care argue those aren't legal _and_ the deal is a
| blanket for allowing all lawful use.
|
| 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.
| wanderlust123 wrote:
| So its ok as long as its not domestic. Got it
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| At the next town hall ask them directly - you making
| assumptions here.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| Can you at least stop lying to yourself? Given what they did
| with Anthropic for not supporting domestic mass surveillance
| and autonomous weapons...
|
| > 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.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| How would OpenAI respond to China or Russia using OpenAI--or
| any AI--for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons?
| ryan_n wrote:
| For the record I don't care if you quit or not. Cash rules
| after all... However, you are incredibly naive if you think
| the current admin will follow through on those terms.
| exizt88 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_(existentialism)
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| lol, naive as hell. why would your company's agreement be the
| same as the one who just refused the _same_ agreement? Even
| my question doesn't even make sense, this is a contradiction,
| therefore your statement must be false. There, it's proven
| roflburger wrote:
| Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You work for a company that's part of the Trump, Ellison,
| Kutchner orbit of corruption.
|
| 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.
| dannyfreeman wrote:
| Your work will be used to power an auto aim kill bot. I
| personally couldn't live with that.
| sph wrote:
| Well, not everyone is born with a spine.
| retsibsi wrote:
| > My understanding is that the OpenAI deal disallows domestic
| mass surveillance and autonomous weapons,
|
| 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.
| WarmWash wrote:
| It looks most likely like Anthropic wanted the ability to
| audit model usage, where as OpenAI was fine with just an
| agreement.
|
| Hegseths tweet strongly alluded to this, and the general
| terms of the agreement are not public, just the hot button
| ones.
| retsibsi wrote:
| Am I wrong to think that such an agreement is basically
| meaningless? OpenAI gets to say there are limits, the
| government gets to do whatever it wants, and OpenAI will
| be very happy not to know about it.
| politician wrote:
| Bingo. You don't have to read much into this if you
| remember how the DoD uses the word trust. In their world,
| a "trusted" system is one that has the power to break
| your security if it goes wrong. So when they say
| "unrestricted use," the likely meaning isn't just fewer
| guardrails it's that the vendor doesn't get to monitor or
| audit how the system is being used. In other words, the
| government isn't handing a private company visibility
| into sensitive operations.
| thisisit wrote:
| Your response is a perfect encapsulation of "It is difficult
| to get a man to understand something when his salary depends
| upon his not understanding it."
|
| I think its wrong for someone to ask someone to resign but
| acting that there is no issue here is debating in bad faith.
| rancar2 wrote:
| The founders are all on a first name basis. I'm surprised no
| one has noted that Anthropic and OpenAI winning together by
| giving the world two different choices, just like the US does
| in its political landscape. In this circumstance, OpenAI wins
| the local market for its government and aligned entities
| (while having the free consumer by a matter of cost dynamic
| for that ideal customer profile which is vary broad and
| similar to Google's search audience where most their revenue
| still depends), while Anthropic is provided the global market
| and prosumer market where people can afford choice by paying
| for it.
| F7F7F7 wrote:
| "B0tH SiDeS ArE ThE SAme!"
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Bad timing to be defending OpenAI's collaboration with the
| military as it launches an illegal bombing campaign.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| Please read about the imperial boomerang
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
| mpalmer wrote:
| Looks to me like you have decided that you are being paid to
| shut up and take the word of the most thoroughly dishonest
| and corrupt US government we've yet seen. Why on God's
| slowly-browning green earth do you trust that Altman got the
| deal Anthropic was trying for?
| fluidcruft wrote:
| What people don't understand is that domestic surveillance
| _by the government_ doesn 't happen and isn't needed. They
| know it's illegal and unpopular and for over two decades they
| have a loophole. Since the Bush administration it's been
| arranged for private contractors to do the domestic
| surveillance on the government's behalf. Entire industries
| have been built around creating "business records" for no
| other purpose than to sell them to the government to support
| domestic surveillance. This is entirely legal and why the DoW
| has been able to get away with saying things like "domestic
| surveillance is illegal, we don't do that" for over two
| decades while simultaneously throwing a shit fit about
| needing "all legal uses" if their access to domestic
| surveillance is threatened.
|
| 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.
| chasd00 wrote:
| #1 weekend HN is not a sane place. #2 emotions are high. #3
| for what it's worth @tedsanders I understand where you're
| coming from and I believe you're making the right choice by
| staying or at least waiting to make a decision. Don't let #1
| and #2 hurt you emotionally or force you to make a rash
| decision you later regret.
|
| 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.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| You are naive, and assisting a fascist regime.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| This seems like the kind of foolishness it takes a lot of
| money to believe. Anthropic blew up their contract with the
| Pentagon over concerns on lethal autonomous weapons and mass
| domestic surveillance. OpenAI rushes in to do what Anthropic
| wouldn't.
|
| 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.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Listen, if the Government using it for legit and safe use
| cases wasn't an issue, then they wouldn't have complained
| about Anthropic's language. Sam is just looking the other way
| and pretending for you employees.
|
| Or Sam bribed the government to do this, which is also
| entirely possible.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Ted, what do you think of your CEO's statement: "the DoW
| displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner
| to achieve the best possible outcome."
|
| The evidence seems to overwhelmingly point in the opposite
| direction.
| johnwheeler wrote:
| I know the money is good, but if I were you (or any OpenAI
| employee), I'd move over to Google or Anthropic posthaste.
|
| 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.
| motbus3 wrote:
| These sort of agreements are easily bypassable, especially on
| such tools.
|
| Someone might just create a spawn of openai with a tag and do
| all the stuff there...
|
| There is no much guarantee I think
| germandiago wrote:
| To me it looks weird that a replacement won't accept Dept of
| War terms. This was the source of the dispute so...
|
| I do not know but I would not very optimistic about those new
| terms.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| " It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
| his salary depends on his not understanding it."
|
| You're being purposefully niave if you trust any government
| and especially this government to behave legally or
| ethically.
| Qiu_Zhanxuan wrote:
| You're paid to look the other way. At least, own it.
| fooker wrote:
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
| his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| there is a recent post about how one of the top OpenAI exec
| has given 25 million$ to a Trump PAC before publicly
| supporting Anthropic/signing this deal.
|
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I don't see why I should quit.
|
| 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.
| weatherlite wrote:
| > I don't see how OpenAI employees who have signed the We Will
| Not Be Divided letter can continue their employment there in
| light of this
|
| 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.
| latexr wrote:
| > 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.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Another plausible explanation that is familiar to a lot of
| people in other countries is banal corruption. Kick out one
| competitor on bogus allegations, then on the next day invite
| another one... what else that could be?
| miohtama wrote:
| OpenAI is already doing mass surveillance, so nothing changes
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/21/tumbler-ridge-...
| chpatrick wrote:
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his
| salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
| no_wizard wrote:
| For all I know Sam Altman orchestrated this via well timed
| donations and whatever the hell contacts he has in government,
| Trump specifically seems to have taken the man
|
| 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.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| Have you seen the size of OpenAi employees comp?
|
| Woolad theyll create the autonomous military robots themselves
| for that check.
| vander_elst wrote:
| > I don't see how OpenAI employees who have signed the We Will
| Not Be Divided letter can continue their employment [...]
|
| Sometimes money is more attractive than morality. So I guess
| money is the answer here.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| This is not a turning point. This is the destination. Were you
| onboard the wrong train?
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| The ones who signed are not the same as the ones who didnt sign
| and continue to work there, Id guess?
| shevy-java wrote:
| Makes sense.
| lazide wrote:
| I few will leave. Most will look nervously at their (non-
| public) stock and their bank accounts, and continuing keeping
| on.
| garyclarke27 wrote:
| I would not discount how much of a factor, irrational human
| emotions play in negotiations. Dario is arrogant and pompous so
| probably wound Hegseth up the wrong way. Sam is much more
| charming and amenable so more able to get his way despite
| similar terms.
| pluc wrote:
| Easy: have no principles that money can't buy. That's the
| American Dream!
| chazftw wrote:
| It was just a ruse to figure out who to fire. Either resign on
| your own terms or get fired. Companies and government only have
| one loyalty, to themselves,
| tmpz22 wrote:
| They were always in it just for the money.
|
| The morals were just there while it was easy virtue signaling.
|
| Same for almost all Google, Facebook, etc. Prove me wrong,
| please.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| > _I don 't see how OpenAI employees who have signed the We
| Will Not Be Divided letter can continue their employment there
| in light of this_
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/companies/openai/salaries
| ecocentrik wrote:
| I think the problem might actually be with reenforcing the red
| lines. The events of the last few weeks and this new deal only
| make sense if Anthropic was trying to find out how Palantir and
| the Pentagon had circumvented their restrictions to attempt to
| reenforce those restrictions like company actually concerned
| about the misuse of their product. OpenAI most likely came in
| with assurances that they wouldn't attempt to reinforce their
| restrictions.
| zingerlio wrote:
| OpenAI employees put knives on their own necks to demand Altman
| to get back and be their boss [1], not too long ago, right?
| Altman wiggles his tongues and makes them a solid paycheck. "We
| will not be divided," unless the water boils slow enough. Wait
| for a few months, he will renegotiate the terms with DoD, just
| like his move to turn OpenAI into a for-profit.
|
| [1]: https://www.wired.com/story/openai-staff-walk-protest-sam-
| al...
| randall wrote:
| i don't get it. what's his motive in your view? he literally
| has no shares in openai.
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| > I don't see how OpenAI employees who have signed the We Will
| Not Be Divided letter can continue their employment there
|
| 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.
| superkuh wrote:
| I have just canceled all services and deleted my account with
| OpenAI. They can get money from the current US regime but I will
| not contribute to their violations of the constitution.
| rvz wrote:
| Not a surprise here, that letter was a trap for OpenAI employees
| who filled it out with their names on it. [0]
|
| 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...
| operator_nil wrote:
| So does this mean that OpenAI will give whatever the DoD asks for
| and they will pinky swear that it won't be used for mass
| surveillance and autonomous killing machines?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| yes
|
| 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")
| cube00 wrote:
| If the redlines are the same how'd this deal get struck?
|
| _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...
| skybrian wrote:
| You're expecting logic from the Trump administration and that's
| not really how they do things. Maybe it was never about the
| redlines? Maybe they decided Anthropic was their enemy, and
| that was their excuse.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Anthropic was too public about being "good". And if there is
| one thing the Trump admin cannot abide it's morality.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| deals are based on personal relationships, not abstract logic
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| huh? the same deal was offered to anthropic who decided not
| to take it.
| otterley wrote:
| This is not true. A different deal was offered to
| Anthropic, and they refused. Then the DoW turned around and
| went with OpenAI even though their terms weren't materially
| different from the terms of their agreement with Anthropic.
| slim wrote:
| Look more carefully at what sam altman satd : he did not say he
| won't remove technical safeguards against surveilance and
| autonomous killing, instead he said "We also will build
| technical safeguards to ensure our models behave as they
| should"
| nxobject wrote:
| > We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our
| models behave as they should
|
| How surprised should I be that a government who's
| consistently railed against "woke AI" isn't caring about
| that?
| interestpiqued wrote:
| What a snake
| t0lo wrote:
| Snakes- as predicted
| Jcampuzano2 wrote:
| I would put bets on the issue probably being that it was pointed
| out that Anthropic's models were used to assist the raid in
| Venezuela, Anthropic then aggressively doubled down on their
| rules/principles and the DOD didn't like being called out on that
| so they lashed out, hard.
|
| If theres anything this admin doesn't like, its being postured
| against or called out by literally anyone, especially in public.
| Monotoko wrote:
| I don't even think Anthropic balked at being used to assist, as
| long as a human has the final say.
| mythz wrote:
| Sam is just about the least trustworthy person in AI, I don't
| trust his words as face value and I consider these weasel words:
|
| > prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human
| responsibility *for the use of force*
| propagandist wrote:
| That means autonomous killbots are a-ok. Human responsibility
| is not the same as human decision-making.
|
| 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.
| elAhmo wrote:
| All that money and not a single ounce of integrity.
| davidw wrote:
| We need some kind of group like "tech people with morals". I'm
| done with these people and their corruption and garbage.
| t0lo wrote:
| Yeah some new banner to organise around- the hard part is
| easily communicating you're an ethical technologist and finding
| others.
| schoen wrote:
| Also, it's probably tricky to find a Schelling point that a
| broad range of people can agree to.
|
| * 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.
| t0lo wrote:
| There is definitely a muddle on so many levels about
| signaling and agreeing on ethics in technology.
|
| 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.
| davidw wrote:
| It'd probably be kind of "big tent" and a bit fuzzy at the
| edges like most big movements are.
| lioeters wrote:
| "Starting today I will be asking prominent members of the
| tech community to sign their name onto this. A code of
| conduct, authored by me, that pledges them to a universal
| ethos, which I created, that I call _tech ethics_ or
| _Tethics_ for short. "
| padolsey wrote:
| Not a group per se but I maintain an index of 'good' people in
| tech here, and their contraries - https://goodindex.org
| latexr wrote:
| Sam has -6/100? How does that work? If you can go into the
| negatives, how low can you get?
| hananova wrote:
| Nowhere is it stated that it is a score out of 100. It is a
| baseline of 0, good actions make it go up, bad actions make
| it go down.
| latexr wrote:
| > Nowhere is it stated that it is a score out of 100.
|
| 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%2
| 0Wo...
| matsemann wrote:
| It's why I think "software engineer" is a misnomer. We don't
| have a license, we don't have an ethics code, we don't sign off
| on stuff. In other disciplines, an engineer could topple a
| project they feel is unsafe or against code, and be backed by
| their union if replaced. A software engineer just says yes if
| their stocks aren't vested, and will be replaced if not.
| gyomu wrote:
| Where can I read more about all the licensed engineers
| toppling unethical military projects?
| qudat wrote:
| I just looked this up so might not be fully accurate but it
| seems most private sector "engineers" don't require a
| license. You only need a PE license when providing a service
| to the public. That is quite a strict band on the title.
| curiousgal wrote:
| This, honestly. Seeing all those billionaires on inauguration
| day lined up to kiss the ring was utterly pathetic. Like what
| is the fucking point of having billions of dollars if you're
| just going to be someone else's bitch. And for what? A couple
| more billion dollars. Oof
| jakeydus wrote:
| A union?
| gota wrote:
| A guild. Control who learns the trade.
| seanclayton wrote:
| Unfortunately most engineers irrationally hate unions
| fourside wrote:
| Unions would've been useful at a time CEO's are salivating
| at the idea of slashing jobs and replacing SWEs with AI.
| jakeydus wrote:
| I think it would still be useful. Call my cynical but
| gone are the days where the individual comp and benefits
| available to SWEs outweigh the benefits of collective
| bargaining.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| So basically Greg Brockman of OpenAI, currently the largest MAGA
| PAC donor, used his bribe to make the government destroy his main
| competition? I'm absolutely cancelling ChatGPT and will tell
| everyone I know to cancel as well.
|
| 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.
| corford wrote:
| If you're unhappy with this, an immediate way to signal it is
| with your wallet. In my case I've just uninstalled chatgpt from
| my phone, cancelled my subscription and will up my spend with
| anthropic.
| cjonas wrote:
| Thanks for reminding me. Been meaning to cancel for months.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| I canceled my subscription, wiped my history, closed my
| account, deleted the app. Using Claude Max.
| ckemere wrote:
| Same
| nearlyepic wrote:
| Do you honestly believe that cancelling a subscription makes a
| bit of difference to a company that is either committing
| accounting fraud on a monumental scale or shoveling venture
| capital money into a furnace? not to mention the whole
| collaborating with a fascist government thing.
|
| 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
| Analemma_ wrote:
| I think you have too much pessimism. It's not guaranteed to
| work, but as I mentioned in another thread, since around
| December, Claude (and Gemini to a lesser extent) has had all
| the buzz in tech circles, while Chat-GPT has seemed like the
| also-ran. And that matters: decision-makers in companies
| notice these things and momentum becomes self-reinforcing
| (you use Claude Code because everyone else uses Claude Code).
| If a large enough group of developers visibly defects from
| OpenAI because of this, it definitely could have
| consequences. It's not a sure thing, but it's far from
| hopeless.
|
| 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.
| coliveira wrote:
| At least I'm not getting my hands dirty.
| Sl1mb0 wrote:
| > but stop pretending this kind of thing matters one iota
|
| 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.
| biophysboy wrote:
| Yes? Earnings matter to investors
| gonzalohm wrote:
| Do they? What are those OpenAI earnings that you are
| talking about? That's a company that should have ceased
| existing some time ago if earnings were important
| afavour wrote:
| Investors want to see growth. If there's no growth or
| even a loss in users the next round of funding will be
| more difficult to secure.
| mythz wrote:
| It absolutely matters, especially when done in unison like
| this.
|
| 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.
| in_cahoots wrote:
| Anthropic isn't against weaponizing AI, it's just against
| two specific carve outs _for now_. They happily accepted
| the Pentagon 's money so long as it was only spying on
| other countries. And now that the leopard is eating their
| face they're claiming the moral high ground.
|
| 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.
| utopiah wrote:
| It sure does but it's hard to get a bigger wallet than
| public money in the US. I do think it's fundamental as an
| individual to take a moral stance, even if it's entirely
| pointless, for one owns psychological well-being but
| honestly here I believe the whole point is precisely to
| decouple from the need of consumers who are clearly NOT
| paying for AI. Relying on income from governments is a
| smart move.
|
| 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.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| It's the only thing that matters. These companies don't
| follow the rules of capitalism physics. They live or die on
| vibes alone and the tech community abandoning them en masse
| is bad for the vibes. Once they lose the vibes they are Wiley
| Coyote looking down at the canyon below.
| sriram_malhar wrote:
| What has an impact is cancelling a subscription and then
| talking about it. The media will amplify it the pushback. The
| goal is to make the name OpenAI and ChatGPT toxic, that
| whatever you do will be converted into a technology that will
| surveil or bomb you.
| mythz wrote:
| Perfect timing - Had already cancelled my Claude sub over their
| OAuth ban in external tools and was about to pick up a Codex
| sub as the next best alternative.
|
| 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.
| adverbly wrote:
| Deleted all chats and deleted my account.
| a_victorp wrote:
| I tried doing that but I'm certain they didn't delete it,
| because I tried logging in after a week and it worked
| willio58 wrote:
| Thanks for the reminder. Doing the same now.
|
| 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.
| slopinthebag wrote:
| Personally I'm happy about this. OpenAI are being fair about
| letting the gov use their models to spy on _everybody_ ,
| doesn't seem right that Americans get a pass.
| afruitpie wrote:
| Just canceled my subscription! I immediately received an email
| with the subject "We'd love your feedback on why you canceled
| your ChatGPT plus subscription" and a link to a survey.
|
| I linked to https://notdivided.org/ as the reasoning why.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| I'd like to say I did that but I already canceled my
| subscription 4 months ago in favor of Claude and Gemini based
| purely on product quality.
|
| Was shocking back then to think how far we've come.
| rrrpdx1 wrote:
| Totally agree. Signed up for a claude code account and will not
| give OpenAI any money in the future. Let's see what Google
| does. I will definitely vote with my wallet.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Exactly. Stop using OpenAI. Don't design it into your software
| at work. Use Claude. Screw these guys.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Just deleted OpenAI account, F these guys
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Yep I'm pulling the plug on my OIA account on Monday morning
| and switching to Anthropic.
| fandorin wrote:
| Same here. Removed my account, deleted the app.
| Robdel12 wrote:
| Raise your hand if you actually read it or if you read the title
| and replied? I see a lot of comments that sure seem like they
| didn't read it.
|
| > 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.
| operator_nil wrote:
| Do you know who isn't a dummy? Sam. The crucial part of that
| statement is that the DoD will use OpenAI systems "lawfully and
| responsibly," which I don't doubt is written somewhere in their
| contract. However, those terms are so open-ended that it's
| impossible for OpenAI to enforce. Sam could have clarified in
| his tweet that they explicitly prohibited the use of their
| technology for mass surveillance and autonomous killings, but
| he deliberately chose not to and to simply say, "We told them
| not to do bad things." which smells like bullshit
| Robdel12 wrote:
| I guess I'm hanging on what
|
| > reflects them in law
|
| Means exactly. What law and what does it say?
|
| I'm also sure he quietly bent the knee, but I want to know
| what "law and policy" it's being reflected in to know.
| layer8 wrote:
| No contract can require the government to "reflect"
| something in law, aside from the fact that the DoD is not a
| legislative body. So whatever Sam is talking about can only
| be lip service.
| jrflowers wrote:
| I like the idea of seeing someone post "I dislike and distrust
| Sam Altman" and thinking "They must be saying that because they
| haven't read the things that he writes"
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The problem is that many of those would-be fact checkers have
| massive incentives to lie about it. So regardless of whether it
| _is_ true, you 're going to see a number of detailed and well-
| researched pieces over the weekend arguing that Altman is right
| and this whole thing is Anthropic's fault. The set of people
| who could cause OpenAI to burn and the set of people who have
| millions of dollars riding on its success substantially
| overlap; it may not take a particularly _good_ argument to
| convince them.
| Robdel12 wrote:
| Yeah, you're right. I'm overly hopeful and naive
|
| Edit: as soon as I hit submit I realized this might sound
| condescending, but I actually mean this lol
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| FWIW I thought the intent was clear.
| anon-3988 wrote:
| > Either it's a bold face lie and OpenAI burns because of it
|
| 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.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| 1-800-Come-on-now
|
| 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
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| _" The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law
| and policy, and we put them into our agreement"_ is incredibly
| wishy washy.
|
| 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?
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| I mean, this is a company literally named "Open"AI, nominally a
| non-profit or whatever. I think they will survive quietly
| opening an endpoint for their customer. Unlikely anyone is
| under enough illusions about Sama's moral character to be
| scandalized by deception.
| dataflow wrote:
| This seems full of loopholes.
|
| > 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?
| mrcwinn wrote:
| Hey dang I know I'm not allowed to say this due to community
| guidelines, but Sam Altman is a lying sack of shit.
| straydusk wrote:
| I know the reaction to this, if you're a rational observer, is
| "OpenAI have cut corners or made concessions that Anthropic did
| not, that's the only thing that makes sense."
|
| 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.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Another good question: If OpenAI knew Anthropic wasn't a
| competitor... was the price higher? Will the federal government
| _also pay more_ for a worse product?
| straydusk wrote:
| You'd have to think so. They're really the only serious
| player left - I doubt Google would want to be involved, and
| xAI is a significant step down.
| voganmother42 wrote:
| If you support openai, you support this admin, simple as
| cwyers wrote:
| There's a lot of people in this thread that assume that Sam
| Altman is the one who is being dishonest here, and I kind of
| understand, but the other two parties who could just as easily be
| lying are Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump, and of the three of them
| if you think sama is the _most_ likely to lie I feel like you
| have not been paying attention.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| So nice of him! I am sure he believes they should offer these
| terms to all competitors.
|
| 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.
| dakolli wrote:
| They're pretending like they didn't enter into this agreement
| last January and are completely entrenched in intelligence
| programs already. They are trying to make it look like they are
| stepping up in a time of need (time of need for the DoD), in
| reality they sold their soul to intelligence and the military a
| year ago.
|
| 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...
| AmericanOP wrote:
| Instant uninstall.
| skeledrew wrote:
| > We also will build technical safeguards to ensure our models
| behave as they should
|
| 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
| mkozlows wrote:
| So there are two possibilities here:
|
| 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.
| slopinthebag wrote:
| > OpenAI has aligned with Trump against Anthropic in a place
| where Anthropic made a correct principled stand.
|
| 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.
| mkozlows wrote:
| If you believe that any country should have a military and
| intelligence apparatus, the job of that apparatus is to kill
| people and surveil foreigners. I do think the US government
| should have a military and intelligence apparatus. Therefore,
| any company that works with it, from suppliers of clothing
| and food to suppliers of compute and AI, are supporting an
| organization with that mission.
|
| The US military _does not_ need to build autonomous weapon
| systems and _should not_ surveil US citizens broadly.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| perhaps us mere mortals should petition our lawmakers to ban mass
| surveillance.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| Did anyone ever doubt sama would just follow the money?
|
| weasels gonna weasel
| lefrenchy wrote:
| This will backfire on Sam someday, he's just a pawn in the agenda
| of the Trump admin.
| abraxas wrote:
| I hope so but I am less optimistic. The oligarchy in Russia who
| remained loyal to the Putin regime have done just fine for
| decades as long as they did not attempt to overthrow the
| dictator. The regime in Washington is basically constructing
| the same type of kleptocracy and very little evidence is there
| that anyone who matters will get in their way. So far as I can
| tell the country is already a form of authoritarian regime
| where the loyalty to the supreme ruler is the main parameter of
| conducting business there.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| In my experience ChatGPT is the most sanctimonious of the leading
| models.
|
| When I need advice for my clandestine operations I always reach
| for Grok.
| AmericanOP wrote:
| Department of War just killed OpenAI's brand
| d--b wrote:
| At this stage, everything OpenAi does is to try to keep investors
| investing.
|
| 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.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| It's amazing how quickly the players keep shifting here.
|
| 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.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Sam is a player and honestly the more interesting one in the
| whole thing.
|
| Mad respect to Sam, now I believe OpenAI have better chance to
| win in the race
| Sl1mb0 wrote:
| > Mad respect to Sam
|
| And people wonder how we got here.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| He's certainly solidified his place in the history of this
| era.
|
| 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.
| webdevver wrote:
| the unwashed mindless masses, acting purely on impulse,
| emotion and social media agitation: Ah yes, the arbiters of
| justice, good taste, morality, etc.
|
| 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.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| Invalidating most of society is such an interesting way
| to live a life on this planet.
|
| Seems somewhere between very isolating and very
| narcissistic.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Hitler won the race in the 1930s too. Totally crushed it.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| I considered that comparison, but in all seriousness, I'm
| not sure it's apt.
|
| 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.
| webdevver wrote:
| absolute truth nuke and the hysteria around it is yet more
| evidence that HN is a negative signal.
|
| anything HN countersignals, go long on.
| deepfriedbits wrote:
| "There are decades where nothing happens and weeks where
| decades happen."
| slibhb wrote:
| I'm unsure how to feel about this whole dust-up. It doesn't seem
| like much has changed in substance. Maybe OpenAI outmaneuvered
| Anthropic behind the scenes. Possibly Anthropic was seen as not
| behaving deferentially enough towards the government. But this
| administration has proven comically corrupt, so it wouldn't
| surprise me if money was involved. Will be interested to see what
| journalists turn up.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I'm never using an OpenAI model or Codex ever again. Period. Idaf
| whether it scores better than Claude on benchmarks or not.
|
| 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...
| m4rtink wrote:
| So this is indeed how OpenAI survives (a little bit longer ?) -
| government bailout.
| quantumwannabe wrote:
| More details on the difference between the OpenAI and Anthropic
| contracts from one of the Under Secretaries of State:
|
| >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
|
| https://x.com/UnderSecretaryF/status/2027594072811098230
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| You're quoting social media posts from a regime official who
| says he didn't participate in these negotiations and doesn't
| work for the relevant department.
|
| _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.
| qwerasdf5 wrote:
| > which I will not believe and you should not believe
|
| 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...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I did choose to immediately disbelieve it. If a Trump
| regime official tells me something, and they could
| plausibly benefit from lying to me about it, I assume until
| proven otherwise that they're lying. They've earned this
| reputation through a large number of consequential and
| later disproven lies; my apologies to Mr. Lewin if he
| personally is an honest man, although I might encourage him
| to think about whether the good he's doing in his role is
| so important that it outweighs the lies he's providing
| cover for and the gradual erosion of his integrity.
|
| > 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.
| toraway wrote:
| 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
|
| He's an administration official openly cheerleading his team.
| This should be characterized as the insider perspective/spin,
| not a neutral analysis of the relevant facts.
| advisedwang wrote:
| A government promise that they'll only do lawful things is not
| reassuring at all:
|
| 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.)
| Tepix wrote:
| This is it exactly.
| makeramen wrote:
| The DoW wants to only be beholden to the laws, and not to
| Anthropics TOS.
|
| 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?
| nullocator wrote:
| They DoW doesn't care about laws, that's the whole point.
| Anthropic did not believe the most law breaking
| administration in history when their drunkard incompetent
| leader said "lol trust us bro"
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Even this most-charitable-possible (to DoW) explanation does
| not even come close to justifying the supply chain risk
| designation. It is absolutely enough (and honestly more than
| enough) for a contract cancellation and a switch to a
| competitor. DoW could have done that for any reason at all, or
| no reason at all. If they had issues with Anthropics terms,
| they 100% _should_ have done that.
|
| Nothing in the quoted text comes anywhere close to the realm of
| justifying the retaliatory actions.
| piker wrote:
| I find myself totally agreeing with the quoted text and also
| this sentiment. It just makes no sense to nuke Anthropic as a
| negotiation tactic if your interest is in preserving the
| republic long term.
| ukblewis wrote:
| AFAIK, the U.S. government is fully entitled to serve them
| under the U.S. Department of War's terms as per the Defense
| Production Act. The government has yet to do this, but a
| company acting in a way that the Department of War perceives
| as benefiting enemy states could certainly be a justification
| for declaring a supply chain risk. Anthropic's decision
| timing as the U.S. has launched a war in the Middle East to
| save millions of Iranian lives (tens if not hundreds of
| thousands of Iranians have already been killed by the Islamic
| Regime) definitely seems to be unjustifiable and the U.S.
| Department of War (so weird for me to type that instead of
| DOD) was smart, in my opinion, not to force Anthropic to work
| with them but to drop all work with them and move to
| providers who will meet the military's needs while at war.
|
| (Just in case anyone was wondering, I live in Israel)
| nxobject wrote:
| > not to force Anthropic to work with them but to drop all
| work with them and move to providers who will meet the
| military's needs while at war.
|
| 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!"
| otterley wrote:
| > a company acting in a way that the Department of War
| perceives as benefiting enemy states could certainly be a
| justification for declaring a supply chain risk.
|
| 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...
| tuesdaynight wrote:
| >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.
|
| 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.
| joemi wrote:
| > Anthropic's decision timing as the U.S. has launched a
| war in the Middle East [...]
|
| 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.
| mindcandy wrote:
| The DoW is engaging in simple crybullying. In my time as an
| online moderator I see it all the time.
|
| "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.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _More details on the difference..._
|
| 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 ...
| ajkjk wrote:
| how I wish that "patriotic" meant something instead of just
| "did what we wanted". I'm so tired of living in an era where
| every communication made by every organization feels like a lie
| transcriptase wrote:
| Sam must not be aware of what happened to any business or foreign
| nation/leader considered outwardly friendly to the first Trump
| administration when the democrats regained control in 2020.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| You're assuming democrats will ever be allowed to regain
| control.
| resfirestar wrote:
| If they earnestly believe in fast ASI timelines then political
| grudges have to be pretty low on OAI's list of worries about
| 2029.
| gaigalas wrote:
| We really need a plan for the scenario in which the US loses the
| trade war and decides to go homicidal AI on the whole world.
| Like, help them recover or something.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Ah, is it the time when Skynet starts to manifest itself...
| pbnjay wrote:
| I had kept my Plus subscription just because I was lazy, and it
| was inexpensive and convenient... but this turn definitely helped
| me get off the fence. I am exporting and deleting my data now,
| and the cancellation is already done.
| skygazer wrote:
| Perhaps Trump's DOD objects specifically to Anthropic models
| themselves declining to do immoral and illegal things, and not
| something just stipulated in an ignorable contract. That would
| give room for Sam to throw some public CYA into a contract, while
| neutering model safety to their requirements.
| midnitewarrior wrote:
| Opportunism without principles at its finest.
| spprashant wrote:
| Just uninstalled the app and canceled subscription. OpenAI can't
| justify their insane valuation without an user base. Especially
| when there are capable models elsewhere.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Absolute disgrace of a person and organization.
| impulser_ wrote:
| For the people that don't understand how they got a deal with the
| same redlines, it probably because OpenAI agreed to not question
| them. The safeguards are there, both parties agree now fuck off
| and let us use your model how we see fit.
|
| 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.
| Monotoko wrote:
| Anthropic vs OpenAI will probably be The Machine vs Samaritan
|
| (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)
| xvector wrote:
| > I don't think they will keep the supply chain risk on
| Anthropic for more than a week.
|
| Why? It is in the admin's interest to absolutely destroy
| Anthropic. Make them an example.
| impulser_ wrote:
| Because once Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and all their
| contractors call to tell them they need Anthropic they will
| drop it.
| blueblisters wrote:
| My knee-jerk reaction to this was looks like an opportunistic
| maneuver that Sam is known for and I'm considering canceling my
| subscriptions and business with OpenAI
|
| 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.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| As people have repeatedly mentioned, if the War Department was
| unhappy with Anthropic's terms, they could have refused to sign
| the contract. But they didn't: they were fine with it for over
| a year. And if they changed their mind, they could've ended the
| contract and both sides could've walked away. Anthropic said
| that would've been fine. But that's not what happened either:
| they threatened Anthropic with both SCR designation and a DPA
| takeover if Anthropic didn't agree to unilateral renegotiation
| of terms that the War Department _had already agreed_ were
| fine.
|
| It's absurd, and doubly so if OAI's deal includes the same or
| even similar redlines to what Anthropic had.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| it seems like oai deal does include the same red lines, plus
| some more, and the ability for oai to deploy safety systems
| to limit the use cases of the model via technical means
|
| 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
| mpalmer wrote:
| "OAI wins by playing the government's game" is such a
| catastrophically bad take.
|
| > 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.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| you're right, supply chain risk is not a negotiating
| tool. it's spite after talks have ended. it indicates a
| ruined relationship
|
| 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
| mpalmer wrote:
| > supply chain risk is not a negotiating tool. it's spite
| after talks have ended.
|
| 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.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Adding more to this, IIRC US Govt threatened to invoke
| laws which have never been used against an American
| company in the entire history of US over two conditions
| that were:
|
| 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.
| cedws wrote:
| I think Altman probably rationalised it to himself by thinking
| that if he doesn't do it, Musk/xAI will, and they give zero
| fucks about safety. So maybe he told himself that it's better
| if OpenAI does it.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| Is there a name for this phenomenon? I've taken to calling it
| "the nihilist's excuse"
| fer wrote:
| I call it race to the moral bottom.
|
| Related: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNqozQ8uaV8
| mikkupikku wrote:
| I love it when I can guess what a video is before I click
| it. Exactly what I hoped it would be.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Similar to false dichotomy. "If we won't do it, <other evil
| guy> will".
| mlpinit wrote:
| In game theory, prisoner's dilemma or maybe stag hunt?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_hunt
| coryodaniel wrote:
| I think it's called being a "shithead"
| slekker wrote:
| Knowing Sam, that's exactly what happened -- and the echo
| chamber inside OpenAI wouldnt dare to disagree
| Lionga wrote:
| Thinking that Scam Altman cares about anyone besides himself
| is crazy. The guy raped his own sister.
| cedws wrote:
| It doesn't have to be genuine concern, it may just be his
| internal narrative.
|
| He allegedly raped his own sister. No charges have been
| brought against him.
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| yeah or he didn't even
| askvictor wrote:
| I feel that if xAI worked well for the job, it would have
| been already been selected.
| manmal wrote:
| Unless you're using an enterprise plan or pay per token, you're
| not hurting their business at all by cancelling. The consumer
| plans are heavily subsidised.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Does it matter? These AI companies need to be able to prove
| that users are willing to pay at all, even if they're not
| paying a profitable amount of money. If investors see that
| they're dumping money into something that's not selling, why
| continue to do so?
| tjpnz wrote:
| It will hurt in future funding rounds if their subscriber
| metric is stalling or going backwards, regardless of how many
| of those subscriptions are profitable.
| blueblisters wrote:
| I think their consumer plans are gross margin positive but
| OpenAI has ~50M paying subscribers driving >$10B in revenue.
|
| 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.
| cube00 wrote:
| Cancelling is the only language these companies understand.
|
| Even Disney couldn't ignore the mass cancellations after
| dropping Kimmel and Disney+ bearly turns over a profit.
| joemi wrote:
| This is ultimately about drawing moral lines, isn't it? In
| that case it wouldn't matter if it hurts their business or
| not.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| AI companies seem to be growth companies whose whole point
| seems to be that they are okay with extreme amounts of
| losses/lack of profitability so long as they grow a lot.
|
| 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.
| coryodaniel wrote:
| There is value tied to free users, but also, not sure I want
| my work and data in a product that's OK with DoD mass
| surveillance and I'm not sure my customers would want their
| data pumping through it either.
| jdiaz97 wrote:
| cancelling my openai subscription, they're gonna miss my 20 USD
| ttrashh wrote:
| Cancel your subscription. It's the least you can do.
| deadbolt wrote:
| Choosing to go along with calling it the "Department of War"
| tells you all you need to know.
| netsroht wrote:
| Remember when openai was too afraid to release the full GPT-2
| model (this one had only 1.5B params) because humanity
| apparently wasn't ready for it. Look where we are just a couple
| of years later. I really admired them back in the day for
| openai gym and PPO etc.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Screw OpenAI. Never opening that app again or using one of their
| models.
| camillomiller wrote:
| Sam Altman is this. Sam Altman needs to be stopped.
| romulussilvia wrote:
| I wonder if this will cause this to save open ai from the bubble!
| i am sure i am wrong;-)
| fiatpandas wrote:
| >human responsibility for the use of force, including for
| autonomous weapon systems
|
| 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.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| China has evacuated its embassies in Iran.
|
| 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.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Iran, Cuba, and to classify people as "Antifa".
|
| A lot of innocent people are about to be harmed because the
| cogs of fascism are lubricated with blood.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| The Iran situation is unique. If it is true that Epstein was
| part of a blackmailing operation run by Israeli intelligence,
| then the time to act is limited. It may only be a matter of
| time before the US-Israel special relationship begins to
| deteriorate, especially as the House of Representatives
| starts digging into what was going on.
|
| 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.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Why would they use chatgpt for target selection?
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has over 200,000
| personnel. There are thousands of putative SAM sites and
| MANPAD launch sites. The amount of data to crunch is
| significant.
|
| Alternatively, the DoW is simply incompetent and Trump or
| Hegseth wants to use AI to draft war plans.
| bibabaloo wrote:
| Are LLMs actually decent at this sort of data crunching
| though? I thought at best they could write a script to
| help.
| greenchair wrote:
| speaking of blood on their hands, they are fighting multiple
| lawsuits related to suicide advice chats.
| voganmother42 wrote:
| OpenAI in action:
| https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2026/2/28/israel-strikes-...
| looksjjhg wrote:
| So it's personal basically
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > Surely if OpenAI had insisted upon the same things that
| Anthropic had, the government would not have signed this
| agreement.
|
| 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).
| matsemann wrote:
| OpenAI was the biggest donor ($25 millions) to Trumps campaign.
| This is them getting their back scratched in return.
| 0xfedbee wrote:
| Honestly not even surprised. What else could you expect from a
| zionist?
| saos wrote:
| Musk 100% right about this guy
| tintor wrote:
| Difference from Anthropic's deal is:
|
| - 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
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I think you guys are giving far too much attention to the
| "autonomous weapons" angle and not enough to the "spying on
| Americans" angle. It makes no sense to use an LLM to power an
| autonomous weapon. It does make a lot of sense to use an LLM to
| monitor communications and public social media profiles to
| create a list of "domestic terrorists" that they can then
| target. I'm willing to bet this is what the administration
| wanted to use Anthropic for.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Sure, and actually the open models are already good enough to
| do that, it's not like any company could stop any
| organization that can collect the data from doing this.
|
| They can just improve on it a lot.
| utopiah wrote:
| Oh yeah, from the company which raison d'etre was being open and
| being good.
|
| _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.
| gabeh wrote:
| It's only $200 from me for the remainder of the year but you're
| not getting it anymore OpenAI. Voting with my wallet tonight.
| Really sad, I've followed OpenAI for years, way before ChatGPT.
| It's just too hard to true up my values with how they've behaved
| recently. This sucks. Goodnight everyone.
| unfunco wrote:
| I cancelled and deleted my account and I got an email
| immediately with a pro-rata refund. You can get that money
| back.
| tim333 wrote:
| It's been kind of downhill since the 2023 Altman firing and
| rehiring.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Just cancelled my Plus plan as well. I will still wait to see
| how things play out before deciding if I'll delete my account
| altogether, but OpenAI's actions simply don't align with my
| values at the moment. Very disappointing.
| user0648 wrote:
| Same. Moving to Anthropic. At some point we can't let the slide
| continue
| tayo42 wrote:
| How do llms get used in either survalience or for autonomous
| weapons. Using written English seems so inefficient?
| levanten wrote:
| Funny that these are the same people that have been blasting the
| alarm on dangers of AI singularity. Now they cannot wait to put
| their tools in weapons.
| wannabe_loser wrote:
| I guess we aren't curing cancer with ai anymore
| riazrizvi wrote:
| Refreshing sanity.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| is there a single thing left that altman promised that he hasn't
| broken with this company...
| pu_pe wrote:
| So this week we've learned that even the government asseses
| Anthropic has the better model, and that OpenAI leadership has no
| concern for safety whatsoever.
| e40 wrote:
| This is how OpenAI gets bailed out in an AI crash, too big to
| fail becomes too important to fail.
| apexalpha wrote:
| "We will not be divided!"
|
| They got divided 12 hours later, lol.
| arendtio wrote:
| So now we are waiting for Anthropic to explain to us what Sam
| agreed to and what they rejected.
|
| 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.
| matsemann wrote:
| From an open non-profit to a war machine in such a short time is
| baffling.
| croes wrote:
| Is OpenAI and ChatGPT nie a national security threat for other
| countries?
| redml wrote:
| regardless of your opinion of ai in government, sam could not
| have picked a worse way for optics to swoop in and make a deal.
| it just looks incredibly bad.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Sam Altman is a psychopath and his only talent is lying to people
| and convincing them of his lies.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I am glad OpenAI stood up to do what's right and give the
| American people the ability to choose how AI is used for
| themselves rather than dictating it from their high horse.
|
| 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.
| raincole wrote:
| Yeah. And they are losing money from inference (HN told me so)
| so the US government is subsidizing our token usage!
| charcircuit wrote:
| OpenAI is not losing money from inference. HN has told you
| the opposite repeatedly.
| raincole wrote:
| I was being sarcastic.
| shevy-java wrote:
| It is difficult to determine whether written text was
| meant to be sarcastic or not.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Any government is allowed to choose to do whatever it wants
| however it wishes; in a republic: given what is legally
| determined by the three branches. Obviously. They can contract
| with whomever they want, make any deal with whomever they want.
|
| 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.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Just because you sign a deal that didn't mean you can't
| change it or terminate it in the future. As long as both
| parties agree any contract can be modified or terminated. If
| they don't usually the contract contains information on how
| it works.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Agreed. That's all it had to be.
|
| Which is why Hegseths vindictive actions seem just a little
| bit disproportionate.
| khalic wrote:
| Their models are crappy anyway, the "super intelligence" BS is
| nowhere to be seen. Just let them die or become a US government
| asset.
| dgxyz wrote:
| Sam Altman being a complete bell end? Who'd have thought it.
|
| I hope everyone goes and works for Anthropic and OpenAI
| collapses.
|
| Markets going to be interesting on Monday. This plus a war. Urgh.
| bambax wrote:
| > _In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect
| for safety_
|
| Right. Pete "FAFO" Hegseth is a model of intelligence,
| moderation, and respect for due process. Nothing to see here.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shares Anthropic's concerns when it comes
| to working with the Pentagon
|
| 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.
| ozgung wrote:
| Do I understand this correctly:
|
| 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"?
| techpression wrote:
| Domestic means nothing, it's like the company Daniel Ek
| invested in saying they won't sell weapons to "Democracies", in
| the context of warfare and control these words are meaningless.
|
| 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.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Is it possible the killing machine could hallucinate and kill
| some random, innocent person?
| sumeno wrote:
| It's incredibly unlikely that it won't do exactly that,
| although we'll be very lucky if it's just that and not a
| random, innocent city
| phtrivier wrote:
| Verhoeven fans would simply call it "a glitch".
| boxedemp wrote:
| It's already happened in the Korean DMZ
| mpalmer wrote:
| I don't think you do?
|
| 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.
| nsvd2 wrote:
| Well, DHS has shown this year that they won't show restraint
| when it comes to attacking American citizens. I would expect
| that trend to continue.
| boxedemp wrote:
| Killing people has been legal forever. But you have to do it at
| scale for it to be legal.
| ares623 wrote:
| Is this setting the stage for a bailout? Was the whole thing
| between the three parties smoke and mirrors to justify a bailout
| down the line? It's conspiracy theory territory but, you know who
| we're dealing with here.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Didn't the department of war announce that it would be working
| with xAI just this past December?
| adangert wrote:
| Let me reiterate some points for people here:
|
| Income and revenue sources always, inevitably, and without fail,
| determine behavior.
| aoeusnth1 wrote:
| I think your theory might be missing an extremely relevant and
| timely counterexample?
| kseniamorph wrote:
| Is there anyone who really understands what's different about the
| OpenAI agreement? Or maybe these are just Sam Altman's public
| statements that don't actually reflect the real terms of the
| deal. I honestly can't figure it out.
| kledru wrote:
| Sorry, despite the public statements of some sort of solidarity
| with Anthropic by sama this looks like a plot to take over from
| losing position.
|
| 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.)
| imwideawake wrote:
| Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic should all have each other's backs
| when it comes to hard lines like this. Sam can say whatever he
| wants, but signing this deal on the same day Trump and Hegseth
| went scorched earth on Anthropic -- for standing up for the very
| values OpenAI claims to hold -- is sleazy.
|
| 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.
| webdevver wrote:
| TOTAL ALTMAN VICTORY
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| Does deploying these models in "the classified network" also mean
| this technology is going to be used to help kill people?
| vander_elst wrote:
| Subscribers should be aware what they are supporting. I think
| that keeping an OpenAI account can be considered an active
| support of this decision, at least for private people who can
| easily change providers.
| throwaway20261 wrote:
| It is quite shocking that almost all AI companies are saying "we
| are not ok with domestic surveillance" but they'll happily sign
| up to surveilling the rest of the world population.
|
| So by that measure the US govt can go get some Israeli software
| to surveill their domestic populace!
|
| Homo sapiens deserve to become extinct.
| nateburke wrote:
| Plain and simple this is revenge for the Anthropic super bowl
| ads, which were epic burns against openAI's primary future
| revenue stream.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| This seems like an exceptionally shallow reading of everything
| and everyone involved.
|
| You think OpenAI decided to build MurderBot because someone
| made fun on them selling ads?
| nateburke wrote:
| I think it's plausible, given the effort he seemed to put
| into his initial response to the ads:
| https://x.com/sama/status/2019139174339928189
| nateburke wrote:
| from the tweet above: "Maybe even more importantly:
| Anthropic wants to control what people do with AI--they
| block companies they don't like from using their coding
| product (including us), they want to write the rules
| themselves for what people can and can't use AI for, and
| now they also want to tell other companies what their
| business models can be."
| petee wrote:
| This explains the "Free Codex" offer i just got in my email
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| While Dario is not my hero with the sometimes the outrageous
| things he says he has a firm moral compass and a backbone that
| aligns with mine and thus I will support his company and their
| products in my personal use and my work.
| owenthejumper wrote:
| Well in the end this is great news - this virtually guarantees
| Anthropic win in the court.
| pluc wrote:
| lol it didn't even take them a whole night.
| ukblewis wrote:
| Thank you Sam Altman for being a man with a good sense of ethics
| and empowering the US Military while it fights evil in Iran and
| empowering the US government and ignoring the idiotic haters
| resters wrote:
| There will be a scene in some future movie about Trump's
| authoritarian rise (we are still early in it) that shows Sam
| signing this agreement. Sam will be played by a character actor
| meant to symbolize silicon valley opportunism and greed.
|
| 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.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| to all the naysayers: what did all these people doing AI research
| expect? that the military doesn't want to use their stuff? and
| then when it does, Pikachu face?
|
| I know I'll get down voted but come on, this is so very naive.
| brainzap wrote:
| the AI datacenter built for 180B are used for surveillance and
| control
| KronisLV wrote:
| In an imaginary world, this would be a precursor to Anthropic
| coming to EU in a greater capacity and teaming up with Mistral,
| eventually leading to similar innovation and progress that
| DeepSeek forced upon the West, benefitting everyone in the long
| run. They seem to have the morals for it and the respect for
| human rights and life given their recent announcement (after some
| backtracking), unlike OpenAI. Sadly, that's not the real world.
| tao_oat wrote:
| I'd apply to work for Anthropic in a heartbeat if it was a
| European company.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| At this point it seems the entire AI Safety/Ethics debate was
| nothing more than a Marketing campaign to hype up the
| capabilities of the models - get people to think that if they're
| potentially dangerous that must mean they're so capable and they
| need to sign up for a subscription.
| gurumeditations wrote:
| The "Department of War" does not exist and no one should use
| their preferred pronouns.
| TeeWEE wrote:
| If you work at OpenAI, leave now while you can.
| otterley wrote:
| The stories I've been reading say that the DoW's agreement with
| OpenAI contain the very same limitations as the agreement with
| Anthropic did. In other words, they pressured Anthropic to
| eliminate those restrictions, Anthropic declined, then they made
| a huge fuss calling them "a radical left, woke company," put them
| on the supply-chain risk list, then went with OpenAI even though
| OpenAI isn't changing anything either.
|
| 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."
| angoragoats wrote:
| It's the Department of Defense, and let's not have the main post
| be a link to the non-consensual-porn-generating and Nazi-
| supporting site. Could an admin change the main link to the
| Fortune article also linked here?
| _alternator_ wrote:
| So while Sam Altman claims that OAI received promises not to have
| fully automated killbot-GPT from Hegseth, so did
| Anthropic(!)--but it contained weasel legal language that allowed
| the USG to ignore the restrictions at will. (We all know how the
| current admin reads such language.)
|
| 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.
| vldszn wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47195085
| kneel wrote:
| Chatgpt has an export function for all of your chats
|
| Use it to save your data, shouldn't be hard to get it working
| elsewhere
| vorticalbox wrote:
| > prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance
|
| so foreign mass surveillance is all good?
| gammarator wrote:
| I would not be surprised if Sam A. helped engineer this whole
| situation... "Child's play," like replacing a reddit ceo.
| gammarator wrote:
| Oh look! https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-whole-thing-was-
| scam
| rambojohnson wrote:
| get fucked OpenAI. cancelled my subscription.
| weare138 wrote:
| There's was an 80s movie about this...
| bodobolero wrote:
| I canceled my ChatGPT subscription and switched to Lumo Plus
| subscription https://lumo.proton.me/about I also considered
| https://mistral.ai/products/le-chat
|
| 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)
| xvector wrote:
| If you want privacy the only option that reasonably delivers is
| Moxie's https://confer.to
|
| But tbh I just switched to Anthropic, they need all the support
| they can get. Claude is great for question/answer.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| What part of "These people are fascists, and need to be stopped"
| are people failing to understand?
| boxedemp wrote:
| The part about money
| fabbbbb wrote:
| Anyone having success with exporting data from ChatGPT? Got the
| export email 11 hours ago but still no download link..
| coryodaniel wrote:
| Don't just cancel, flood them with CCPA requests.
| taway1874 wrote:
| Well ... bumped up my Claude subscription from Pro to Max and
| closed out my OpenAI accounts. It's a drop in the ocean but I'll
| sleep better knowing I did the right thing. Thanks ChatGPT! It
| was good knowing you.
| nahuel0x wrote:
| Remember that the US administration is supporting Israel on the
| ethnic-cleansing and genocide of Gaza, using Palantir technology
| and AI systems that generate kill lists. It's "IBM and the
| Holocaust" all over again.
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