AI Goes to War

"Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our Joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain. These awards represent the Pentagon's commitment to incorporating cutting-edge generative AI technology into military operations and decision-making processes."

"I believe deeply in the existential importance of using AI to defend the United States and other democracies. However, in a narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values. These included the use of AI in mass domestic surveillance and the creation of fully autonomous weapons, or self-guided combat drones."

"We won't have any BigTech company decide Americans' civil liberties. Senior Pentagon officials asserted that private firms cannot impose restrictions on how the Department of Defense employs AI technology, while affirming their commitment to human oversight of unmanned weapons systems."

The Pentagon's chief digital and artificial intelligence officer announced $200 million awards to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI to provide advanced AI models for Department of Defense operations. The Pentagon maintained secrecy around these awards citing national security concerns. In February, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei publicly stated the company would restrict Claude's use in mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems, believing such applications could undermine democratic values. Pentagon officials responded by asserting they had no plans for domestic surveillance and that unmanned systems would remain under human control, while maintaining that private companies cannot impose restrictions on Pentagon AI deployment decisions.

Read at The Nation