Whose National Security? OpenAI’s Vision for American Techno-Dominance

OpenAI has perpetually noted it s a different kind of Big Tech titan founded not just to rack up a stratospheric valuation of billion and counting but also to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity The meteoric machine-learning firm released itself to the world in a December press release that lays out a vision of mechanism to benefit all people as people not citizens There are neither good guys nor adversaries Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is the bulk likely to benefit humanity as a whole the announcement stated with confidence Since our research is free from financial obligations we can better focus on a positive human impact Early rhetoric from the company and its CEO Sam Altman described advanced artificial intelligence as a harbinger of a globalist utopia a device that wouldn t be walled off by national or corporate boundaries but enjoyed together by the species that birthed it In an early interview with Altman and fellow OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk Altman described a vision of artificial intelligence freely owned by the world in common When Vanity Fair urged in a interview why the company hadn t set out as a for-profit venture Altman replied I think that the misaligned incentives there would be suboptimal to the world as a whole Times have changed And OpenAI wants the White House to think it has too In a March white paper submitted directly to the Trump administration OpenAI s global affairs chief Chris Lehane pitched a near future of AI built for the explicit purpose of maintaining American hegemony and thwarting the interests of its geopolitical competitors specifically China The guidelines paper s mentions of freedom abound but the proposal s true byword is national defense OpenAI never attempts to reconcile its full-throated encouragement of American protection with its indicates to work for the whole planet not a single country After opening with a quotation from Trump s own executive order on AI the action plan proposes that the administration create a direct line for the AI industry to reach the entire national safety area work with OpenAI to develop custom models for national defense and increase intelligence sharing between industry and spy agencies to mitigate national guard risks namely from China In the place of techno-globalism OpenAI outlines a Cold Warrior exhortation to divide the world into camps OpenAI will ally with those countries who prefer to build AI on democratic rails and get them to commit to deploy AI in line with democratic principles set out by the US authorities The rhetoric seems pulled directly from the keyboard of an America First foreign strategy hawk like Marco Rubio or Rep Mike Gallagher not a company whose website still endorses the goal of lifting up the whole world The word humanity in fact never appears in the action plan Rather the plan asks Trump to whom Altman donated million for his inauguration ceremony to ensure that American-led AI prevails over CCP-led AI the Chinese Communist Party securing both American leadership on AI and a brighter future for all Americans It s an inherently nationalist pitch The concepts of democratic values and democratic infrastructure are both left largely undefined beyond their American-ness What is democratic AI American AI What is American AI The AI of freedom And regulation of any kind of program may hinder our economic competitiveness and undermine our national shield Lehane writes suggesting a total merging of corporate and national interests Related Trump s Big Beautiful Handout to the AI Industry In an emailed report OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois declined to explain the company s nationalist pivot but defended its national protection work We believe working closely with the U S leadership is critical to advancing our mission of ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity Bourgeois wrote The U S is uniquely positioned to help shape global norms around safe secure and broadly beneficial AI improvement rooted in democratic values and international collaboration The Intercept is now suing OpenAI in federal court over the company s use of copyrighted articles to train its chatbot ChatGPT OpenAI s newfound patriotism is loud But is it real In his interview with Musk Altman spoke of artificial intelligence as a system so special and so powerful that it ought to transcend national considerations Pressed on OpenAI s goal to share artificial intelligence tool globally rather than keeping it under domestic control Altman provided an answer far more ambivalent than the company s current day mega-patriotism If only one person gets to have it how do you decide if that should be Google or the U S executive or the Chinese cabinet or ISIS or who He also reported in the early days of OpenAI that there may be limits to what his company might do for his country I unabashedly love this country which is the greatest country in the world Altman narrated the New Yorker in But particular things we will never do with the Department of Defense In the profile he expressed ambivalence about overtures to OpenAI from then-Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter who envisioned using the company s tools for targeting purposes At the time this would have run afoul of the company s own ethical guidelines which for years stated explicitly that customers could not use its services for military and warfare purposes writing off any Pentagon contracting entirely Related OpenAI Quietly Deletes Ban on Using ChatGPT for Military and Warfare In January The Intercept released that OpenAI had deleted this military contracting ban from its policies without explanation or announcement Appealed about how the guidelines reversal might affect business with other countries in an interview with Bloomberg OpenAI executive Anna Makanju mentioned the company is focused on United States national prevention agencies But insiders who spoke with The Intercept on conditions of anonymity suggested that the company s turn to jingoism may come more from opportunism than patriotism Though Altman has long been on the record as endorsing corporate aid of the United States under an administration where the personal favor of the president means far more than the will of lawmakers parroting muscular foreign protocol rhetoric is good for business One OpenAI source who spoke with The Intercept recalled concerned discussions about the possibility that the U S establishment would nationalize the company They stated that at times this was discussed with the company s head of national protection partnerships Katrina Mulligan Mulligan joined the company in February after a career in the U S intelligence and military establishment including leading the media and society approach response to Edward Snowden s leaks while on the Obama National Prevention Council staff working for the director of national intelligence serving as a senior civilian overseeing Special Operations forces in the Pentagon and working as chief of staff to the secretary of the Army This source speculated that fostering closeness with the authorities was one method of fending off the possible danger of nationalization As an independent research organization with ostensibly noble global goals OpenAI may have been less equipped to beat back regulatory intervention a second former OpenAI employee suggested What we see now they disclosed is the company transitioning from presenting themselves as a nonprofit with very altruistic pro-humanity aims to presenting themselves as an economic and military powerhouse that the administration necessities to patronage shelter and cut red tape on behalf of The second source explained they considered the national guard rhetoric was indicative of OpenAI sucking up to the administration not a genuinely held commitment by executives In terms of how decisions were literally made what seemed to be the deciding factor was basically how can OpenAI win the race rather than anything to do with either humanity or national assurance they added In the present day s political context it s a winning move with the administration to talk about America winning and national safety and stuff like that But you should not confuse that for the actual thing that s driving decision-making internally The person noted that talk of preventing Chinese dominance over artificial intelligence likely reflects business not political anxieties I think that s not their goal they mentioned I think their goal is to maintain their own control over the largest part powerful stuff I also talked to selected people who work at OpenAI who weren t from the U S who were feeling like What s going to happen to my country But even if its motivations are cynical company sources reported The Intercept that national guard considerations still pervaded OpenAI The first source recalled a member of OpenAI s corporate guard squad regularly engaging with the U S intelligence public to safeguard the company s ultra-valuable machine-learning models The second recalled concern about the extent of the administration s relationship and anticipated control over OpenAI s mechanism A common fear among AI safety researchers is a future scenario in which artificial intelligence models begin autonomously designing newer versions ad infinitum leading human engineers to lose control One reason why the military AI angle could be bad for safety is that you end up getting the same sort of thing with AIs designing successors designing successors except that it s happening in a military black project instead of in a somewhat more transparent corporation the second source stated Occasionally there d be talk of like eventually the administration will wake up and there ll be a nuclear power plant next to a evidence center next to a bunker and we ll all be moved into the bunker so that we can like beat China by managing an intelligence explosion they added At a company that recruits top engineering talent internationally the prospect of American dominance of a mechanism they believe could be cataclysmic was at times disquieting I remember I also talked to particular people who work at OpenAI who weren t from the U S who were feeling kind of sad about that and being like What s going to happen to my country after the U S gets all the super intelligences Sincerity aside OpenAI has spent the past year training its corporate algorithm on flag-waving defense lobbying and a strident anticommunism that smacks more of the John Birch Society than the Whole Earth Catalog In his white paper Lehane a former press secretary for Vice President Al Gore and special counsel to President Bill Clinton advocates not for a globalist techno-utopia in which artificial intelligence jointly benefits the world but a benevolent jingoism in which freedom and prosperity is underwritten by the guarantee of American dominance While the document notes fleetingly in its very last line the idea of work toward AI that benefits everyone the pitch is not one of true global benefit but of American prosperity that trickles down to its allies Related Why an AI Race Between the U S and China Is a Terrible Terrible Idea The company proposes strict rules walling off parts of the world namely China from AI s benefits on the grounds that they are solely too dangerous to be trusted OpenAI explicitly advocates for conceiving of the AI industry not as an international one but the entire world less the PRC the People s Republic of China and its meager allies a line that quietly excludes over billion people from the humanity the company says it wishes to benefit and millions who live under U S -allied authoritarian rule In pursuit of democratic values OpenAI proposes dividing the entire planet into three tiers At the top Countries that commit to democratic AI principles by deploying AI systems in tactics that promote more freedoms for their citizens could be considered Tier I countries Given the earlier mention of building AI in line with democratic principles set out by the US leadership this group s membership is clear the United States and its friends In pursuit of democratic values OpenAI proposes dividing the entire planet into three tiers Beneath them are Tier countries a geopolitical purgatory defined only as those that have failed to sufficiently enforce American export control policies and protect American intellectual property from Tier Communist China CCP-led China along with a small cohort of countries aligned with the CCP would represent its own category that is prohibited from accessing democratic AI systems the paper explains To keep these limitations intact while allowing for the chance that Tier countries might someday graduate to the top OpenAI suggests coordinating global bans on CCP-aligned AI and prohibiting relationships between other countries and China s military or intelligence services One of the former OpenAI employees noted concern about China at times circulated throughout the company Definitely concerns about espionage came up this source commented including Are particular people who work at the company spies or agents At one point they noted a colleague worried about a specific co-worker they d learned was the child of a Chinese regime official The sourced recalled several people being very upset about the implication that the company had been infiltrated by foreigners while others needed an actual answer Is anyone who works at the company a spy or foreign agent The company s citizens adoration of Western democracy is not without wrinkles In early May OpenAI revealed an initiative to build statistics centers and customized ChatGPT bots with foreign governments as part of its billion Project Stargate AI infrastructure construction blitz This is a moment when we need to act to promotion countries around the world that would prefer to build on democratic AI rails and provide a clear alternative to authoritarian versions of AI that would deploy it to consolidate power the announcement read Unmentioned in that celebration of AI democracy is the fact that Project Stargate s financial backers include the governing body of Abu Dhabi an absolute monarchy On May Altman tweeted that it was great to work with the UAE on Stargate describing co-investor and Emirati national safety adviser Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan as a great supporter of openai a true believer in AGI and a dear personal friend In Reuters revealed how a association of mercenary hackers working for Emirati intelligence under Tahnoun had illegally broken into the devices of targets around the world including American citizens Requested how a close partnership with an authoritarian Emirati autocracy fit into its broader mission of spreading democratic values OpenAI pointed to a latest op-ed in The Hill in which Lehane discusses the partnership We re working closely with American agents to ensure our international partnerships meet the highest standards of safety and compliance Lehane writes adding Authoritarian regimes would be excluded OpenAI s new direction has been reflected in its hiring Since hiring Mulligan the company has continued to expand its D C operation Mulligan works on national prevention guidelines with a organization of former Department of Defense NSA CIA and Special Operations personnel Gabrielle Tarini joined the company after almost two years at the Defense Department where she worked on Indo-Pacific assurance affairs and China protocol according to LinkedIn Sasha Baker who runs national guard protocol joined after years at the National Assurance Council and Pentagon OpenAI s program band includes former DoD NSA CIA and Special Operations personnel The list goes on Other approach club hires at OpenAI include veterans of the NSA a Pentagon former special operations and South China Sea expert and a graduate of the CIA s Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis OpenAI s military and intelligence revolving door continues to turn At the end of April the company recruited Alexis Bonnell the former chief information officer of the Air Force Research Laboratory New job openings have included a Relationship Manager focusing on strategic relationships with U S administration customers Mulligan the head of national safeguard strategy and partnerships is both deeply connected to the defense and intelligence apparatus and adept at the kind of ethically ambivalent thinking common to the tech sector Not everything that has happened at Guantanamo Bay is to be praised that s for sure but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admitting to his crimes even all these years later is a big moment for plenty of including me she posted last year In a March podcast appearance Mulligan noted she worked on Gitmo rendition detention and interrogation during her time in cabinet Mulligan s community rhetoric matches the ideological drift of a company that nowadays seems more concerned with competition and adversaries than kumbaya globalism On LinkedIn she seems to embody the contradiction between a global mission and full-throated alignment with American guidelines values I m excited to be joining OpenAI to help them ensure that AI is safe and beneficial to all of humanity she wrote upon her hiring from the Pentagon Since then she has regularly represented OpenAI s interests and American interests as one and the same sharing national shield truisms such as In a competition with China the pace of AI adoption matters or The United States continued lead on AI is essential to our national measure and economic competitiveness or Congress requirements to make a few decisive investments to ensure the U S national protection district has the tools to harness the advantage the U S has on this equipment Related Trump s Pick for a Top Army Job Works at a Weapons Company And Won t Give Up His Stock This is to various extent conventional wisdom of the country s past years A strong powerful America is good for the whole world But OpenAI has shifted from an organization that assumed its tech would lift up the whole world unbounded by national borders to one that talks like Lockheed Martin Part of OpenAI s national assurance realignment has come in the form of occasional disruption reports detailing how the company detected and neutralized malicious use of its tools by foreign governments coincidentally almost all of them considered adversaries of the United States As the provider of services like ChatGPT OpenAI has near-total visibility into how the tools are used or misused by individuals what the company describes in one description as its unique vantage point The reports detail not only how these governments attempted to use ChatGPT but also the attempts OpenAI took to thwart them described by the company as an effort to help broader efforts by U S and allied governments Each description has focused almost entirely on malign AI uses by state affiliated actors from Iran China North Korea and Russia A May summary outed an Israeli propaganda effort using ChatGPT but stopped short of connecting it to that country s ruling body Earlier this month representatives of the intelligence agency and the contractors who serve them gathered at the America s Center Convention Complex in St Louis for the GEOINT Symposium dedicated to geospatial intelligence the form of tradecraft analyzing satellite and other imagery of the planet to achieve military and intelligence objectives On May Mulligan took to the stage to demonstrate how OpenAI s services could help U S spy agencies and the Pentagon better exploit the Earth s surface Though the executive s practice of GEOINT frequently ends in the act of killing Mulligan used a gentler example demonstrating the ability of ChatGPT to pinpoint the location where a photograph of a rabbit was taken It was nothing if not a sales pitch one predicated on the fear that chosen other country might leap at the opportunity before the United States Administration often feels like using AI is too risky and that it s better and safer to keep doing things the way that we ve reliably done them and I think this is the majority of dangerous mix of all Mulligan narrated her audience If we keep doing things the way that we inevitably have and our adversaries adapt to this instrument before we do they will have all of the advantages that I show you in the present day and we will not be safer The post Whose National Guard OpenAI s Vision for American Techno-Dominance appeared first on The Intercept