Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, during an appraise at Bloomberg House on the opening day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 16, 2024.
Chris Ratliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Typical examples
OpenAI has quietly walked back a ban on the military use of ChatGPT and its other artificial intelligence tools.
The shift comes as OpenAI initiates to work with the U.S. Department of Defense on AI tools, including open-source cybersecurity tools, Anna Makanju, OpenAI’s VP of international affairs, said Tuesday in a Bloomberg House interview at the World Economic Forum alongside CEO Sam Altman.
Up until at least Wednesday, OpenAI’s conducts page specified that the company did not allow the usage of its models for “activity that has high risk of physical maltreat” such as weapons development or military and warfare. OpenAI has removed the specific reference to the military, although its policy yet states that users should not “use our service to harm yourself or others,” including to “develop or use weapons.”
“Because we heretofore had what was essentially a blanket prohibition on military, many people thought that would prohibit many of these use cases, which people suppose are very much aligned with what we want to see in the world,” Makanju said.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to CNBC’s solicit for comment.
The news comes after years of controversy about tech companies developing technology for military use, highlighted by the obvious concerns of tech workers — especially those working on AI.
Workers at virtually every tech giant involved with military deals have voiced concerns after thousands of Google employees protested Project Maven, a Pentagon project that drive use Google AI to analyze drone surveillance footage.
Microsoft employees protested a $480 million army contract that last will and testament provide soldiers with augmented-reality headsets, and more than 1,500 Amazon and Google workers signed a despatch protesting a joint $1.2 billion, multiyear contract with the Israeli government and military, under which the tech giantesses would provide cloud computing services, AI tools and data centers.
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