Topline
Hundreds of current staffers at Google and OpenAI signed an open letter expressing support for Anthropic’s refusal to comply with the Pentagon’s demand for unrestricted access to its AI tools and urging their own companies’ leaders to also stick to similar red lines and refuse the Defense Department’s demands.
Key Facts
As of Friday morning, the petition titled “We Will Not Be Divided” has been publicly signed by 266 Google and 65 OpenAI staffers, all of whom are current employees.
Citing an Axios report, the letter accuses the Defense Department of going after Anthropic for “sticking to their red lines to not allow their models to be used for domestic mass surveillance and autonomously killing people without human oversight.”
The letter then notes that the Pentagon is currently negotiating with Google and OpenAI “to try to get them to agree to what Anthropic has refused.”
The signees accuse the Pentagon of trying to “divide each company with fear that the other will give in,” and state, “This letter serves to create shared understanding and solidarity in the face of this pressure.”
The petition then urges OpenAI and Google’s leaders to “put aside their differences and stand together to continue to refuse” the Pentagon’s demands.
Tangent
On Thursday, the New York Times reported that more than 100 Google staffers working on AI signed an internal letter to the company’s leadership, raising concerns about the Pentagon’s plan to use their AI tools. The letter sent to Jeff Dean, the chief scientist at Google’s AI division DeepMind, urged the company to echo Anthorpic’s demands. “Please do everything in your power to stop any deal which crosses these basic red lines…We love working at Google and want to be proud of our work,” the letter reportedly said.
What Has Anthropic Said About Its Clash With The Pentagon?
In a statement issued on Thursday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei doubled down on its red lines and said his company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s request to remove its safeguards and allow “any lawful use” of its AI tools. The statement outlined the work Anthropic has done to deploy its models for the U.S. military and intelligence community, but said it believes there are a “narrow set of cases, we believe AI can undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.” As a result, its contracts with DoD have included two safeguards that prevent the use of their AI in “mass domestic surveillance” and “fully autonomous weapons,” where no human involvement is needed for deployment.
Crucial Quote
“AI-driven mass surveillance presents serious, novel risks to our fundamental liberties. To the extent that such surveillance is currently legal, this is only because the law has not yet caught up with the rapidly growing capabilities of AI,” Amodei said in his statement. He also added, “Today, frontier AI systems are simply not reliable enough to power fully autonomous weapons. We will not knowingly provide a product that puts America’s warfighters and civilians at risk.”
