OpenAI, Anduril partner on AI drone-defense plan
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Defense contractor Anduril and ChatGPT maker OpenAI Wednesday announced "a strategic partnership to develop and responsibly deploy advanced artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for national security missions" with an initial focus on anti-drone systems.
Why it matters: The U.S. now sees AI as a global race, chiefly with China, to dominate the new technology and use it to further national interests. At the same time, debates still rage about AI's reliability and long-term safety.
State of play: The companies said they will combine OpenAI's most advanced models and Anduril's military hardware and software to protect the U.S. from unmanned aircraft.
- The project will aim to "detect, assess and respond to potentially lethal aerial threats in real time" by training OpenAI models on Anduril's data about drone "threats and operations."
What they're saying: Anduril CEO and co-founder Brian Schimpf emphasized the effort's commitment to "responsible solutions" that help "military and intelligence operators to make faster, more accurate decisions in high-pressure situations."
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company "supports U.S.-led efforts to ensure the technology upholds democratic values" and aims to "help the national security community understand and responsibly use this technology to keep our citizens safe and free."
Between the lines: OpenAI started out as a nonprofit specifically intended to prioritize safeguards over speed in developing and deploying AI.
- More recently it has taken the vanguard in making advanced AI available to the general public, and begun the process of transforming itself into a more conventionally structured for-profit firm.
Flashback: Silicon Valley first emerged 50 years ago as a center of defense contracting, but more recently working with the Pentagon has become a source of controversy in some regions of the industry, notably Google.
- This past summer employees of Google's DeepMind signed a letter protesting the company's work for military organizations.
The bottom line: AI-defense partnerships are spreading. Last month OpenAI rival Anthropic partnered with Palantir to make Anthropic's Claude models available to U.S. intelligence and defense agencies.
Go deeper: In remote Texas, Anduril probes future of drone warfare
