OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted in an X post that the deal was ‘definitely rushed’|World Economic Forum|CC BY-NC-2.0
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company “definitely rushed” its new defense deal with the Pentagon and admitted that “the optics don’t look good.”
The deal came after talks between Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth failed last week, and it ended the contract with the AI firm.
President Donald Trump mandated that all federal agencies stop using Anthropic’s Claude chatbot soon, labeling it a supply chain risk.
OpenAI quickly signed a new agreement to provide AI models for classified government work.
While the ChatGPT maker says its systems cannot be used for mass domestic surveillance, fully autonomous weapons, or “social credit” systems, critics point out the contract language could still allow surveillance.
Altman said he made the deal to reduce tensions between the Pentagon and the AI industry, even though it sparked backlash and briefly hurt ChatGPT’s app rankings.