Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story<\/p>\n
More than 30 employees from OpenAI and Google, including Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, filed an amicus brief on Monday in support of Anthropic in its legal fight against the US government.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf allowed to proceed, this effort to punish one of the leading US AI companies will undoubtedly have consequences for the United States\u2019 industrial and scientific competitiveness in the field of artificial intelligence and beyond,\u201d the employees wrote.<\/p>\n
The brief was filed just hours after Anthropic sued the Department of Defense and other federal agencies over the Pentagon\u2019s decision to designate the company a \u201csupply-chain risk.\u201d The sanction, which severely limits Anthropic\u2019s ability to work with military contractors, went into effect after Anthropic\u2019s negotiations with the Pentagon fell apart. The AI startup is seeking a temporary restraining order to continue its work with military partners as the lawsuit progresses. This brief specifically supports this motion.<\/p>\n
Signatories of the brief include Google DeepMind researchers Zhengdong Wang, Alexander Matt Turner, and Noah Siegel, as well as OpenAI researchers Gabriel Wu, Pamela Mishkin, and Roman Novak, among others. Amicus briefs are legal filings submitted by parties that are not directly involved in a court case but that have expertise relevant to it. The employees signed in a personal capacity and don\u2019t represent the views of their companies, according to the brief.<\/p>\n
OpenAI and Google did not immediately respond to WIRED\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n
The amicus brief says that the Pentagon\u2019s decision to blacklist Anthropic \u201cintroduces an unpredictability in [their] industry that undermines American innovation and competitiveness\u201d and \u201cchills professional debate on the benefits and risks of frontier AI systems.\u201d It notes that the Pentagon could have simply dropped Anthropic\u2019s contract if it no longer wished to be bound by its terms.<\/p>\n
The brief also says that the red lines Anthropic claims it requested, including that its AI wouldn\u2019t be used for mass domestic surveillance and the development of autonomous lethal weapons, are legitimate concerns and require sufficient guardrails. \u201cIn the absence of public law, the contractual and technological requirements that AI developers impose on the use of their systems represent a vital safeguard against their catastrophic misuse,\u201d the brief says.<\/p>\n
Several other AI leaders have also publicly questioned the Pentagon\u2019s decision to label Anthropic a supply-chain risk. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a post on social media that \u201cenforcing the SCR [supply-chain risk] designation on Anthropic would be very bad for our industry and our country.\u201d He added that \u201cthis is a very bad decision from the DoW and I hope they reverse it.\u201d As Anthropic\u2019s relationship with the Pentagon soured, OpenAI quickly signed its own contract with the US military, a decision some people criticized as opportunistic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story More than 30 employees from OpenAI and Google, including Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, filed an amicus brief on Monday in support of Anthropic in its legal fight against the US government. \u201cIf allowed to proceed, this effort to punish one of the leading US AI companies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-47246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47246\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}