- Caitlin Kalinowski, previously head of robotics at OpenAI
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ckalinowski_i-resigned-from-o...
- Caitlin Kalinowski, previously head of robotics at OpenAI
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ckalinowski_i-resigned-from-o...
But I am trying to understand this from the perspective of defence & govt. Why is it so business as usual for them? Do they consider this at par with missiles with infra-red/heat sensors for tracking/locking? Where does the definition of lethal autonomy begin and end?
Just putting this out there as a point to ponder on. By itself, this may rightly be too broad and should be debated.
On its face that’s not a crazy stance: Governments are meant to represent the public, while private companies obviously aren't. I think it’s somewhat understandable why the government might reject that kind of "we know better than you" type of clause.
Of course, the reaction is wildly out of proportion. A normal response would just be to stop doing business with the company and move on. Labeling them a supply chain risk is an extreme response.
I don’t think Anthropic is wrong to include that clause with this particular administration, and I doubt the administration is internally framing the issue the way I did rather than defaulting to simple authoritarian instincts.
But a more reasonable administration could raise the same concern, and I think I would agree with them.
> Of course, the reaction is wildly out of proportion. A normal response would just be to stop doing business with the company and move on. Labeling them a supply chain risk is an extreme response.
Maybe the argument is that they should, but I don't agree with that. If Anthropic or any of these other vendors have reservations about the logical conclusion of how these tools will be/are used then they should not sell to the government. Simple as. However ... if the claims Anthropic et al make about how these systems will develop and the capabilities they will have are at all true, then the government will come knocking anyway.
Dario has even said something along these lines at one point: As the technology matures, it’s very possible the government either nationalizes or semi-nationalizes companies like Anthropic.
That doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility if they can’t land on a relationship similar to existing defense contractors like Raytheon, where these kinds of discussions obviously don't seem to happen.
So it’s probably some mix of two things:
1) A punitive “bend the knee us or we’ll destroy you,” which fits their track record.
2) Skepticism that Grok is actually as strong as the benchmarks suggest, which is also a pretty reasonable possibility.
I can't agree that this is the right comparison. What is being sold here is not just another missile or tank type, it is the very agency and responsibility over life and death. It's potentially the firing of thousands of missiles.
I was thinking that Anthropic would just be providing the models/setup support to run their models in aws gov cloud. They do not have any real insight into what is being asked. Maybe a few engineers have the specific clearances to access and debug the running systems, but that would one or two people who are embedded to debug inference issues - not something that would be analyzed by others in the company.
The whole 'do not use our models for mass surveillance' is at the end of the day an honor system. Companies have no real way of enforcing that clause, or determining that it has been violated. That being said, at least historically, one has been able to trust the government to abide by commercial agreements. The people who work in cleared positions are generally selected for honesty, and ability, willingness to follow rules.
>The whole 'do not use our models for mass surveillance' is at the end of the day an honor system. Companies have no real way of enforcing that clause, or determining that it has been violated.
You are also correct here imo, with one important caveat. Even if private companies have the means for enforcing that clause, it is not their business to do so. Maybe that's the crux of the problem, one of perspective. The for-profit entity in these arrangements is not and can never be trusted as the mechanism of enforcement for whatever we, as a republic, decide are the rules. That is the realm of elected government. Anthropic employees are certainly making their voice heard on how they believe these tools should be used, but, again, this is an is versus ought problem for them.
In a version of a trolley problem where you're on a track that will kill innocent people, and you have the opportunity to set up a contract that effectively moves a switch to a track without anyone on it, is it not imperative to flip that switch?
(One might argue that increased reaction times might save service members' lives - but the whole point is that if the autonomous targeting is incorrect, it may just as well lead to increased violence and service member casualties in the aggregate.)
And we're not talking about the ethics board manipulating individual token outputs subtly, which would indeed be a supply chain risk - we're talking about a contractual relationship in which, if a supplier detects use outside of the scope of an agreed contract, it has the contractual right to not provide the service for that novel use, while maintaining support for prior use cases.
The fact that the government would use the threat of supply chain risk to enforce a better contract is unprecedented, and it deteriorates the government's standing as a reliable counterparty in general.
This problem is really difficult to discuss because we are all wrapping the capabilities of these tools into our response framing. These are tools, or weapons. Your hypothetical could just as easily be applied to GBU-39s, a smaller laser guided bomb that's meant to take out, say, a single vehicle in a convoy versus the entire set of vehicles. If you're not confident in what the product is supposed to do, and you've already sold it to the government, you have lied and they are going to come back to you asking some direct questions.
On the other hand, why should the government have infinite power to override how a business operates? If you're not able to refuse to sell to the government, isn't that basically forced speech and/or forced labor?
And now that we see the government blatantly disrespecting the constitution and the rule of law the civil community must react.
The government shouldn’t be able to set the terms of its contracts with private companies and walk away if those terms aren’t acceptable? That seems like a stretch.
The constitution is a wildly different premise from government contracting with private companies.
The government shouldn't be able to coerce a business to do whatever it wants.
So the contract process worked. The seller wanted certain clauses, the buyer rejected them, and the deal didn’t happen.
Setting aside the supply chain risk designation, which I already said was an extreme overreaction, this is basically how it’s supposed to work.
> The government shouldn't be able to coerce a business to do whatever it wants.
Governments coerce businesses all the time to do what the government wants. Taxes are the obvious example, but there are many others like OFAC sanctions lists or even just regular old business regulations.
It mostly works because we rely on governments to use that power wisely, and to use it in a way that represents the wishes of the populace. Clearly that assumption is being tested with the current administration and especially in this particular situation, but the government coerces businesses to do what they want all the time and we often see it as a good thing.
If you're one of the contractors working in NRO or aware of Sentient, OpenAI and Anthropic probably do look like supply chain risks. They want to subsume the work you're already doing with more extreme limitations (ones that might already be violated). So now you're pitching backup service providers, analyzing the cost of on-prem, and pricing out your own model training; it would be really convenient if OpenAI just agreed to terms. As a contractor, you can make them an offer so good that it would be career suicide to refuse it.
Autonomous weapons are a horse of a different color, but it's safe to assume the same discussions are happening inside Anduril et. al.
https://www.vp4association.com/aircraft-information-2/32-2/m...
A less charitable interpretation is that the current doctrine is "China / Russia will build autonomous killbots, so we can't allow a killbot gap".
I'm frankly less concerned about "proper" military uses than I am about the tech bleeding into the sphere of domestic law enforcement, as it inevitably will.
What's the reason this is less charitable, exactly? Do we think this isn't true, or that we think it's immoral to build the Terminator even if China/Russia already have them?
We'll leave the morality of war for another time.
Hum...
The one thing domestic surveillance enables is defining targets inside the country, and the one thing lethal autonomy enables is executing targets that a soldier would refuse to.
Those things don't have other uses.
A 2017 national intelligence law compels Chinese companies and individuals to cooperate with state intelligence when asked and without and public notice.
China has no equivalent of the whistleblower protection that enables resignations with public letters explaining why, protests, open letters with many signatures, etc. Whenever you see "Chinese whistleblower" in the news, you're looking at someone who quietly fled the country first and then blew the whistle. Example: https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/27/us/china-nyc-whistleblower-uf...
NSLs are also narrow in scope: they compel data disclosure, not active technical assistance in building surveillance systems like the Chinese law.
The Chinese laws can compel any citizen anywhere in the world to perform work on supporting state military and intelligence capabilities with no recourse. There have been no cases of companies or individuals fighting those orders.
China's constitution includes freedom of speech and elections.
Funny thing when you put rights on hold today for 'reasons' they tend to just go away. Look at the US today versus pre 9/11. It's a completely different country with completely different attitudes about freedom and privacy and government over reach and power.
Why do I not believe this at all? Were things truly sunshine and roses at OpenAI up until this Pentagon debacle? Perhaps I am mistaken, but it seemed like the writing was on the wall years ago.
> I have deep respect for Sam and the team
I have even more questions now.
Which further solidifies my belief that this person is being disingenuous.
Not to mention that the principles are not being betrayed now for the first time.
Most importantly, this seems to rest more on if you believe the principle was being followed or not.
It is possible to believe one thing, have another person believe another thing, and respect that their decision is sincerely held but subject to a different perspective, as is our own beliefs.
You can stand up for what you believe and still respectfully disagree with someone with a different stance.
The problem is when you decide that reality always conforms to you opinion. If you assume the other person is aware of that reality and decides differently than it becomes a betrayal of principles. Assuming to know the internal state of another's mind to declare that it is for money becomes disrespectfully presumptuous.
Your problem is not in understanding how X can occur if Y. It is assuming that everyone agrees with you on Y.
You might be right about Y, you might be wrong. Even if you are right, it is still possible that Y is a belief a rational person can hold if their perspective has been different,
That is one of my many questions too. I am not certain I believe her either. People predicted AI would be used in such nefarious manners way before AI even existed.
Something about the whole resignation and immediate social media post seems more like an attention grab than anything else to me. Whatever her prerogative is, I still believe she is still partially culpable for anything that becomes of this technology -- good or bad.