Protesters outside OpenAI’s headquarters in San Francisco said they were rallying against the deal CEO Sam Altman’s company had made with the Pentagon, saying they didn’t ‘trust the people at the top.’
The contract between OpenAI and the Pentagon was signed on 27 February, hours after Donald Trump issued a statement ordering federal agencies to cease use of AI competitor, Anthropic’s Claude. The number of people uninstalling ChatGPT has surged since the news of the contract was announced.
The negotiation between the Pentagon and Anthropic had broken down because the OpenAI rival sought contractual guarantees against mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.
After backlash, Altman called the initial deal ‘opportunistic and sloppy’, and vowed to amend the contract.
