OpenAImaker of ChatGPT and one of the most prominent artificial intelligence companies in the world, said today that it has partnered with Anduril, a defense startup that makes missiles, drones and software for the US military. It marks the latest in a series of similar announcements made recently by major Silicon Valley tech companies warming to closer ties with the defense industry.
“OpenAI is building artificial intelligence to benefit as many people as possible and supports US-led efforts to ensure that the technology upholds democratic values,” Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, said in a statement Wednesday.
OpenAI’s AI 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 faster and more accurately, giving operators the information they need to make better decisions while staying out of harm’s way,” says a former OpenAI employee who left the company earlier this year and spoke about the condition. anonymity to protect their professional relationship.
OpenAI changed its policy on the use of 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 military is already using some OpenAI technology, according to reports from The Intercept.
Anduril is developing an advanced air defense system with a swarm of small, autonomous aircraft that work 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 the 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 more risky, especially given the unpredictability of today’s models.
A few years ago, many AI researchers in Silicon Valley strongly opposed working with the military. In 2018, thousands of Google employees staged protests against the company, which provided artificial intelligence to the US Department of Defense through what was then known in the Pentagon as Project Maven. Google later backed out of the project.