No one has a good plan for how AI companies should work with the government
📖 Full Retelling
As OpenAI transitions from a wildly successful consumer startup into a piece of national security infrastructure, the company seems unequipped to manage its new responsibilities.
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As Sam Altman discovered Saturday night, it’s a fraught time to do work for the U.S. government. Around 7 p.m., the OpenAI CEO announced he would be fielding questions publicly on X, as a way of demystifying his company’s decision to pick up the Pentagon contract that Anthropic had just walked away from. Most of the questions boiled down to OpenAI’s willingness to participate in mass surveillance and automated killing – the exact activities Anthropic had ruled out in its negotiations with the Pentagon. Altman typically punted to the public sector, saying it wasn’t his role to set national policy. “I very deeply believe in the democratic process,” he wrote in one response, “and that our elected leaders have the power, and that we all have to uphold the constitution.” An hour later, he confessed surprise that so many people seemed to disagree. “There is more open debate than I thought there would be,” Altman said, “about whether we should prefer a democratically elected government or unelected private companies to have more power. I guess this is something people disagree on.” It’s a telling moment for both OpenAI and the tech industry at large. In his Q&A, Altman employed a stance that’s standard in the defense industry, where military leaders and industry partners are expected to defer to civilian leadership. But what’s more telling is that, as OpenAI transitions from a wildly successful consumer startup into a piece of national security infrastructure, the company appears unequipped to manage its new responsibilities. Altman’s public town hall came at a heightened time for his company. The Pentagon had just blacklisted OpenAI rival Anthropic for insisting on contractual limitations for surveillance and automated weaponry. Days later, OpenAI announced it had won the same contract Anthropic had given up. Altman portrayed the deal as a quick way to deescalate the conflict – and it was surely a lucrative one. But he seemed unprepared for how much blowback it generated ...
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