Altman Reportedly Tells Staff OpenAI Wants Another Classified Contract. This Time with NATO

The AI giant is in the middle of a consumer backlash after it made a deal with the U.S. Department of Defense. Multiple news outlets got a peek at transcripts from an OpenAI all-hands meeting Tuesday in which CEO Sam Altman sought to soothe his apparently agitated employees in the wake of the company’s fatefully timed contract with the Pentagon. Altman mostly comes across as conciliatory. The Wall Street Journal says he called the ordeal “painful” and seemed to regret looking “not united with the field.” CNBC’s reporting says Altman “has been vocally criticized” by some of his employees.But a standout passage in the Wall Street Journal’s write-up on the meeting says OpenAI is actually going back for seconds. Altman apparently told his staff that OpenAI is “looking at a contract to deploy on all North Atlantic Treaty Organization classified networks.” To be clear, clearance just to be used on NATO’s classified networks is already an apparently lucrative trophy. Apple proudly announced that it received an approval from NATO just last month, saying iPhones and iPads can now be used for classified NATO purposes—a first for any consumer device, apparently. OpenAI’s freshly inked Pentagon contract does more or less the reverse of this: grants permission for the Department of Defense to use OpenAI’s technology freely, and without OpenAI getting to “make operational decisions,” according to CNBC’s reading of the meeting transcript. The New York Times describes it as a “deal to provide artificial intelligence technologies for the Defense Department’s classified systems.” NATO signaled last year that its members would be increasing their defense budgets drastically, triggering what venture capitalist Dave Harden said at the time would be an “AI gold rush.”OpenAI’s broader monetary contract with the Pentagon was announced back in June of last year when the company announced its OpenAI for Government product. Through the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) OpenAI was awarded up to $200 million in projects. Gizmodo reached out to OpenAI for confirmation and clarity about the contract it is seeking with NATO. We will update if we hear back.