Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has sharply criticised Sam Altman following OpenAI’s recent deal with the Pentagon. In an internal memo first reported by The Information, Amodei dismissed OpenAI’s public messaging as “straight up lies,” accusing Altman of falsely “presenting himself as a peacemaker and dealmaker”. The Anthropic boss also described OpenAI’s dealings with the Department of Defense, known under the Trump administration as the Department of War, as “safety theatre”.
“The main reason [OpenAI] accepted [the DoD’s deal] and we did not is that they cared about placating employees, and we actually cared about preventing abuses,” Amodei wrote, as per TechCrunch.
OpenAI’s agreement was reached shortly after Anthropic withdrew from negotiations, citing concerns that the US government intended to use its models for domestic surveillance, a use case Amodei deemed incompatible with the company’s democratic values.
Meanwhile, Altman said the deal was signed along similar red lines to Anthropic, using “technical safeguards” that the Department of Defense had agreed to.
“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,” Altman wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
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‘Should’t Have Rushed’
However, after the backlash, Altman earlier this week admitted that the original deal had been struck too quickly and that the company should not have rushed.
“We shouldn’t have rushed to get this out on Friday,” Altman wrote. “The issues are super complex, and demand clear communication. We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy.”
The company is now amending its hastily arranged deal, stating it would explicitly bar its tech from being used for mass surveillance purposes or being deployed by defence department intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA).
A website where people have pledged to boycott ChatGPT claims that more than 2.5 million have already left the chatbot service after OpenAI signed the contract. The estimate based on website signatures, share counts on social media and credible app usage data, highlighted that people were increasingly becoming disillusioned with ChatGPT.
