OpenAIcreator of ChatGPT and one of the most important artificial intelligence companies around the world, declared today that it has entered into a partnership with On the sensora defense startup that makes missiles, drones and software for the US military. It is the latest in a series of similar announcements made recently by major tech firms in Silicon Valley, which has pledged to forge closer ties with the defense industry.
“OpenAI builds AI to benefit as many people as possible and supports U.S.-led efforts to ensure the technology upholds democratic values,” Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, said in a statement Wednesday.
OpenAI’s artificial intelligence models will be used to improve systems used for air defense, Brian Schimpf, co-founder and CEO of Anduril, said in the statement. “Together, we are committed to developing responsible solutions that enable military and intelligence operators to make faster and more accurate decisions in high-pressure situations,” he said.
OpenAI’s technology will be used to “assess drone threats more quickly and accurately, giving operators the information they need to make better decisions while staying out of harm’s way,” says a former OpenAI employee who has left company earlier this year and spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their professional relationships.
OpenAI changed its policy on using its AI for military applications earlier this year. A source who worked at the company at the time says some employees were unhappy with the change, but there were no open protests. The US Army already uses some OpenAI technologies, as reported by The Intercept.
Anduril is developing an advanced air defense system featuring a swarm of small autonomous aircraft working together on missions. These aircraft are controlled through an interface powered by a large language model, which interprets natural language commands and translates them into instructions that both human pilots and drones can understand and execute. Until now, Anduril has used open source language models for testing purposes.
Anduril is not currently known to use advanced artificial intelligence to control its autonomous systems or to allow them to make their own decisions. Such a move would be riskier, especially given the unpredictability of today’s models.
A few years ago, many AI researchers in Silicon Valley were adamantly against working with military. In 2018, thousands of Google employees staged protests about the company that provided artificial intelligence to the U.S. Department of Defense through what was then known within the Pentagon as Project Maven. Google later he pulled back of the project.
