OpenAI breaks with another of its founding ideas: its technology will finally reach the battlefield

OpenAI has just left behind another of its founding principles. The company of artificial intelligence, which was born as a non-profit entity, adopted a hybrid structure with a commercial arm in 2019. Now, as it moves to abandon what it still had of altruism, it has decided to take its technology to the battlefield, and had promised not to do it.

Anduril, a defense firm that manufactures drones, radars and missiles, has announced a strategic partnership with OpenAI “to responsibly develop and deploy advanced AI solutions for national security missions.” The idea is that AI models can help improve the detection, assessment and response capabilities of military drones.

OpenA technology in military drones

The defense company wants to take advantage of OpenAI technology to more quickly process the data collected by its unmanned aircraft. Anduril seeks to reduce the workload of human operators and improve situational awareness. To do this, the models used will be trained with data on threats and missions from their drones.

The agreement arises when the updated OpenAI policies They still prohibit the use of their technology to “develop or use weapons.” The defense company says that “the partnership aims to improve the nation’s defense systems that protect US and allied military personnel from attacks by unmanned drones and other aerial devices.”

One of Anduril’s drones

It’s no secret that there is a race to develop AI between Washington and Beijing. Anduril, precisely, mentions this scenario and says that if his country gives ground to the Asian giant, it runs the risk of lose technological advantage that has underpinned the country’s national security for a long time.

It should be noted that this is not the first time that OpenAI has been involved with the defense sector. Earlier this year he announced that he would begin collaborating with The Pentagon and in October he published an article on “OpenAI’s approach to AI and national security”, where it indicated that it could support tasks such as scientific research, translation in collaboration with the US Government.

Images | OpenAI | Anduril

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