OpenAI mentioned Monday the U.S. Department of Defense granted it a contract for as much as $200 million to assist the company determine and construct prototype methods that use its frontier fashions for administrative duties and extra.
OpenAI offers a number of examples of attainable tasking, equivalent to serving to service members get healthcare, streamlining knowledge on numerous applications, and “supporting proactive cyber protection.” The firm additionally mentioned that “All use instances should be in line with OpenAI’s utilization insurance policies and tips.”
The DoD’s announcement used barely extra simple wording. It says, “Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to handle essential nationwide safety challenges in each warfighting and enterprise domains.”
Whether that reference to war-fighting applies to the weapons themselves or simply different areas related to wars, like paperwork, stays to be seen. OpenAI’s tips do forbid particular person customers to make use of ChatGPT or its APIs to develop or use weapons. However, OpenAI deleted the specific prohibitions of “army and warfare” in its phrases of service again in January, 2024.
Given how closely some highly effective individuals in Silicon Valley have warned of the risks of China’s superior LLM fashions, it’s not stunning the DoD desires to make use of OpenAI for no matter functions it desires. For occasion, Marc Andreessen, co-founder of VC agency Andreessen Horowitz, an OpenAI investor, not too long ago appeared on Jack Altman’s “Uncapped” podcast (brother of Sam Altman). Andreessen described the race between China’s AI and the western world’s fashions as a “chilly battle.”
Still, maybe an equally fascinating a part of this announcement is what it says about OpenAI’s more and more strained relationship with its main investor Microsoft.
Microsoft has hundreds of contracts with the federal authorities value a whole bunch of thousands and thousands of {dollars}. It has, for many years, been implementing the strict safety protocols vital for the federal government – particularly the DoD – to make use of its cloud.
OpenAI introduced this deal as a part of its broader new “OpenAI for Government” program, which consolidates quite a lot of different applications it makes use of to promote wares on to authorities companies, together with the U.S. National Labs, the Air Force Research Laboratory, NASA, NIH, and the Treasury, based on the corporate.
But it was solely in April that Microsoft introduced the DoD had authorised its Azure OpenAI Service for all categorised ranges. Now the DoD can also be going straight to the supply. From Microsoft’s perspective: ouch.
Neither OpenAI nor Microsoft instantly responded to a request for remark.
