Unexpected departure from the OpenAI giant. Robotics division chief resigns over Pentagon contract
A top robotics director at OpenAI said on Saturday that she resigned over the company's deal with the Pentagon, which allows the use of artificial intelligence for military and domestic surveillance purposes, France 24 reports.
Caitlin Kalinowski, head of robotics at OpenAI, the company that owns ChatGPT, announced her departure citing concerns about the company's agreement with the Department of Defense, Reuters notes.
In a post on the X social network, Kalinowski wrote that OpenAI did not allow enough time before agreeing to deploy its AI models on the Pentagon's classified cloud networks.
“AI plays an important role in national security,” Kalinowski wrote. “But surveillance of Americans without judicial review and lethal autonomy without human authorization are issues that deserved more debate.”
“It was a matter of principle, not of people,” Kalinowski stressed.
Kalinowski also wrote on X that while he has “deep respect” for OpenAI chief Sam Altman and his team, the company announced the deal with the Pentagon “without defining the boundaries.”
“This is primarily a governance issue,” Kalinowski wrote in a later post on X. “These are too important to make hasty deals or announcements.”
The company behind ChatGPT won a settlement with the Pentagon last month, just hours after its competitor Anthropic refused to comply with a government ultimatum demanding that it grant the US military unrestricted use of its artificial intelligence assistant Claude, according to AFP.
OpenAI said the day after the deal was struck that it included additional safeguards.
The company reiterated on Saturday that its “red lines” preclude the use of its technology in domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons.
“We recognize that people have strong views on these issues and we will continue to engage in discussions with employees, government, civil society and communities around the world,” the company said in a press release.
Kalinowski joined OpenAI in 2024 after leading the development of augmented reality hardware at Meta.
