Many other OpenAI staffers have also publicly criticized the company’s Pentagon deal.
“i personally don’t think this deal was worth it,” Aidan McLaughlin, a research scientist at OpenAI, wrote on X.
Another employee told CNN that many of them “really respect” Anthropic for refusing the Pentagon’s deal.
Clive Chan, a technical staffer, wrote in an X post that he believed OpenAI’s contract barred the use of its models for mass weapons or mass domestic surveillance. Chan wrote that he’s advocating for the company to share more information.
“If we later learn this is not the case, then I will advocate internally to terminate the contract,” Chan wrote.
Even before the deal, nearly 900 former and current OpenAI and Google staffers signed a joint petition supporting Anthropic, one of their primary competitors, and opposing the use of their companies’ technology for weapons that can kill without human oversight and mass surveillance.
“The Pentagon is negotiating with Google and OpenAI to try to get them to agree to what Anthropic has refused,” the petition said.
