The CEO of AI Anthropic, Dario Amodei, responded to the United States Department of Defense and the White House, ordering military defense contractors that do business with the Department of Defense to stop using Anthropic products.
Anthropic has objected to the use of its AI models for internal mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons that can be fired without human input, Amodei told CBS on Saturday.
He added that Anthropic is fine with all US government use cases for its AI models, except for surveillance and fully autonomous weapons platforms. He said:
“These are things that are important to Americans: the right not to be spied on by the government, the right of our military officers to make their own decisions about war and not turn it over completely to a machine.”
The Defense Department’s decision to designate Anthropic as a “supply chain risk,” meaning military contractors cannot use Anthropic products on defense contracts, is “unprecedented” and “punitive,” he added.
Amodei later clarified that he is not opposed to developing fully automatic weapons if foreign militaries start using them in the future, but that AI is not yet reliable enough to operate independently in a military setting.
Amodei said the law did not keep up with the fast-growing field of AI and called on the United States Congress to pass “safeguards” to prevent AI from being used in mass domestic surveillance programs.
related to: Anthropic says it has been targeted in massive distillation attacks
OpenAI wins defense contract after US authorities label Anthropic a supply chain threat
On Friday, US “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth announced that Anthropic was a “national security supply chain threat”.
“Effective immediately, no contractor, supplier or partner that does business with the United States military will be able to do business with Anthropic,” he said.
A few hours later, rival artificial intelligence company OpenAI won a contract with the US Department of Defense to deploy its AI models on military networks.
The announcement of the deal by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sparked online backlash from critics who cited AI being used for mass domestic surveillance and violating individual privacy as a red line.
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