OpenAI’s $200M DoD contract could squeeze frenemy Microsoft

OpenAI mentioned Monday the U.S. Division of Protection granted it a contract for as much as $200 million to assist the company determine and construct prototype programs that use its frontier fashions for administrative duties and extra.

OpenAI offers just a few examples of potential tasking, reminiscent of serving to service members get healthcare, streamlining information on varied applications, and “supporting proactive cyber protection.” The corporate additionally mentioned that “All use circumstances should be in step with OpenAI’s utilization insurance policies and pointers.” 

The DoD’s announcement used barely extra simple wording. It says, “Below this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to deal with essential nationwide safety challenges in each warfighting and enterprise domains.”

Whether or not that reference to war-fighting applies to the weapons themselves or simply different areas related to wars, like paperwork, stays to be seen. OpenAI’s pointers do forbid particular person customers to make use of ChatGPT or its APIs to develop or use weapons. Nevertheless, OpenAI deleted the express prohibitions of “army and warfare” in its phrases of service again in January, 2024.

Given how closely some highly effective folks in Silicon Valley have warned of the risks of China’s superior LLM fashions, it’s not shocking the DoD desires to make use of OpenAI for no matter functions it desires. For example, Marc Andreessen, co-founder of VC agency Andreessen Horowitz, an OpenAI investor, just lately appeared on Jack Altman’s “Uncapped” podcast (brother of Sam Altman). Andreessen described the race between China’s AI and the western world’s fashions as a “chilly battle.”

Nonetheless, maybe an equally attention-grabbing a part of this announcement is what it says about OpenAI’s more and more strained relationship with its main investor Microsoft.

Microsoft has 1000’s of contracts with the federal authorities price a whole lot of tens of millions of {dollars}. It has, for many years, been implementing the strict safety protocols mandatory for the federal government – particularly the DoD – to make use of its cloud. 

OpenAI introduced this deal as a part of its broader new “OpenAI for Authorities” program, which consolidates plenty of different applications it makes use of to promote wares on to authorities companies, together with the U.S. Nationwide Labs⁠, the Air Drive Analysis Laboratory, NASA, NIH, and the Treasury, in accordance with the corporate.

However it was solely in April that Microsoft introduced the DoD had authorised its Azure OpenAI Service for all labeled ranges. Now the DoD can be going straight to the supply. From Microsoft’s perspective: ouch.

Neither OpenAI nor Microsoft instantly responded to a request for remark.