OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract
90 comments
·June 16, 2025ungreased0675
tonyhart7
200 mil is chump change for them, if prototype turned to be good then good for them but if its not then they are not worry
TZubiri
Not all software is made public and used in workstations, especially not in military
0_____0
Would you mind elaborating a bit?
deletedie
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai...
If the physical disconnect between killing a person (e.g. UAVs) wasn't enough to make that task easier then further offloading the decision of who to target might help.
Waterluvian
“Let’s take another whack at real-time object identification built into night vision goggles.”
(Made-up but plausible example)
pyuser583
I heard one thing AI is very good at declassifying documents.
Avicebron
Let's hope before they wire it directly to the controls "because speed" they've trained it on Stanislav Petrov up down and backwards..
m3kw9
I don’t understand but that sounds funny
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
> On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to four more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm.
upghost
Does anyone have any idea what the DoD could possibly want from OpenAI? Less accurate/more sycophantic missiles?
notesinthefield
Some of the more popular models (NIPRGPT, the various DREN models) are “soft banned” and DoD is in need of a unified solution. MSFT’s GCC HIGH and GovCloud implementations have been slow to materialize. But more to your point - everyone is using LLM’s to pick up the slack from layoffs. Im sitting in meetings and watching my gov customers generate documentation and proposals everyday. Everything the commercial world uses AI for the US gov is doing the same. Cant directly speak to targeting but you can bet your ass there are 100 different offensive projects trying to integrate AI into ISR work and the like.
pests
Planatir has an older demo of their chat like interface showcasing targeting selection, battle plans and formations, other advice. Kind of creepy, I assume it’s much more capable now.
greenavocado
Palantir is the poster child for a global panopticon
munificent
1. Secretary of Defense feels like bombing some place. Asks aide to write a report on, justification, logistics, and consequences.
2. Aide tells subordinate to write report.
3. Subordinate uses ChatGPT to write the 100-page report. Sends it to aide.
4. Aide uses ChatGPT to summarize report. Sends summary to SecDef.
5. SecDef accidentally posts summary on publicly-accessible social media page, then forwards to President.
6. Bombs go boom.
ginkgotree
Yeah, tons. SIGNT / HUMINT analysis. After action report summaries. war gaming to optimize deterrence. human machine teaming. LLM-in-the-loop for warfighters. rapid code gen in field deployments for units to spin up software solutions. The list is endless, imho.
felixgallo
llm-in-the-loop for whatever a 'warfighter' is is basically the opposite of how fighting wars should go.
kube-system
The DoD does plenty of things beyond putting boots on the ground. They’re the world’s largest employer. They have all the same boring problems that any employer has at gigantic scale.
ginkgotree
why? it could help them asses threats, civilians / avoid collateral damage. Like any weapon or technology, it depends on its use. warfighter is the modern industry / academic term used for "soldier."
somenameforme
Automatically generated, native sounding, propaganda at scale - capable of interacting in real time. This was always the MIC money endgame for LLMs. This is also probably why they are enlisting tech execs from Meta, OpenAI, etc.
bcrosby95
I look forward to our senators "living" to 100+.
null
gilgoomesh
ChatGPT, do you know where the General left his keys?
impulser_
You will be surprise how much work at the DoD has nothing to do with weapons.
ringeryless
which also can be botched
mosura
AI explosives with personalities feature in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film)
bpodgursky
You guys have no idea how many DoD man-hours are spent on jobs like
"add up all the item counts in the inventory report and send a weekly email"
Yes maybe OpenAI is developing killer drones or maybe (imo likely) it's licensing a FedRAMP complaint AI for normal business work.
muglug
You don’t need AI to complain about FedRAMP
bpodgursky
Technically I can still edit that post but now I think it's better this way.
null
d--b
So much for humanity’s greater good Sam.
loandbehold
Depending on your political views it may be good if it helps USA keeping its military edge over China and preventing China from invading Taiwan.
vasco
There's invasions going on right now that aren't being prevented, no need for theoretical ones.
ringeryless
said capabilities Hegseth is utterly gutting and undermining.
It's more likely China's next gen aircraft one should be wary of, than their AI. (as previewed in recent Indian Pakistani air engagements)
i really see this so-called AI race as a bullet to be dodged; a bubble to be waited out. it has been relentlessly pushed from on top, and we always find really pushy FOMO as the main driver.
I'm not impressed by non deterministic mechanisms that undo the zero overhead advantages hard won by decades of automation. this is not a CAD tool amplifying and articulating human intentions, but a vague floppy jelly blob of "i wonder what will come out"
tehjoker
Why do you even care about Taiwan?
rvz
Isn't this part of the true definition of "AGI" and its all for the benefit of humanity?
Or is it that are we finally realizing that we are getting scammed again on these so-called promises and it was all a grift.
Maybe we should just wake up.
lyu07282
People are practically irrelevant infants at this point. We are about to repeat the Iraq war, point by point with universal agreement. The same people in charge are recycling the same propaganda, selling the same lies to in many cases quite literally the same people again and it's working, so I don't know why you are expecting anyone to ever "wake up".
trhway
On the way to benefit all humanity MS helped Sam back then, and now MS will get to wake up to the real Sam :)
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
“OpenAI executives have considered accusing Microsoft, the company's major backer, of anticompetitive behavior in their partnership …
OpenAI's effort could involve seeking a federal regulatory review of the terms of its contract with Microsoft for potential violations of antitrust law, as well as a public campaign,…“
gxs
This, this is why I have such an issue with the amount of taxes I pay
Not because I’m anti social programs the way people like to immediately assume, but because of dumb shit like this that I have no control over
kube-system
Honestly, why do you think it is dumb?
I think it is pretty well established that LLMs can be a great time saver when used appropriately. Why wouldn’t you want that productivity gain at the government level?
_def
Reading and writing reports when peoples lives are on the line is arguably a hot topic, no?
kube-system
One would imagine that a $200m contract would come with at least some minimal amounts of guidance on best practices. The DoD is not a spring chicken with it comes to automation. They’ve been a perennial early adopter.
eastbound
OpenAI was supposed to be open; After making it a private company, it will become governmental & defense.
Good luck to Elon Musk for his trial for the open-source-ness of the organization.
Judging from how the DoD currently buys software, lots of money will be spent, many headlines will be written, awards will be handed out, and zero software will make it on to user workstations. End users will continue to use Excel for everything.