nytimes.com
www.nytimes.com

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/43810526

Actions by the president and the Pentagon appeared to drive a wedge between Washington and the tech industry, whose leaders and workers spoke out for the start-up.

Feb. 27, 2026

https://archive.ph/hwHbe

Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, said in a memo to employees this week that “we have long believed that A.I. should not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons.”

More than 100 employees at Google signed a petition calling on the tech giant to “refuse to comply” with the Pentagon on some uses of artificial intelligence in military operations.

And employees at Amazon, Google and Microsoft urged their leaders in a separate open letter on Thursday to “hold the line” against the Pentagon.

Silicon Valley has rallied behind the A.I. start-up Anthropic, which has been embroiled in a dispute with President Trump and the Pentagon over how its technology may be used for military purposes. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s chief executive, has said he does not want the company’s A.I. to be used to surveil Americans or in autonomous weapons, saying this could “undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”

  • Zwuzelmaus@feddit.orgEnglish
    27·
    12 hours ago

    Dario Amodei […] said he does not want the company’s A.I. to be used to surveil Americans or in autonomous weapons, saying this could “undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”

    This is absolutely reasonable and I support this position.

    Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, said in a memo to employees this week that “we have long believed that A.I. should not be used for mass surveillance or autonomous lethal weapons.”

    But I don’t trust this guy who shows regularly that he wants to be the ruler of the whole world by means of his own AI.

    • partofthevoice@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      This stuff is really scary when you think about it. If we keep getting closer to a reality where technology can silently monitor your every thought, with analysis and automation becoming evermore efficient, what’s bound to happen so long as the only thing stopping it from being used against us is moral standing? Eventually, someone somewhere can make something so trivially that it tips the scales in their favor so long as they lack the moral standing to not do so. Technology is a unique kind of threat, given especially the glorification that’s often given to its innovation. Skepticism could have been applied earlier.