OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Feb. 27 that his company has struck a deal with the U.S. Department of War to deploy its artificial intelligence (AI) models on the Pentagon’s classified networks.
“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,” he said on X.
Altman also said that he hoped the Pentagon would offer the same terms to other AI companies in a way that all parties could agree to.
“We have expressed our strong desire to see things de-escalate away from legal and governmental actions and towards reasonable agreements,” he said. “We remain committed to serve all of humanity as best we can.”
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth reposted Altman’s post on social media but has not yet issued a statement. The Department of War did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
Hegseth also said that Anthropic would continue to provide services to the Department of War for a period of six months to ensure a smooth transition to another provider.
“We have tried in good faith to reach an agreement with the Department of War, making clear that we support all lawful uses of AI for national security aside from [mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons],” it said.