Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, admitted that his company mismanaged the rollout of its recently announced deal with the US Department of War, calling the announcement “opportunistic and botched” after strong backlash from users.
In a series of messages published on Monday, Altman said the artificial intelligence developer had moved too quickly in formalizing the deal and failed to adequately explain the complexity of the issues involved. “There is one thing I think we did wrong: we should not have rushed to publish this on Friday,” he wrote.
The contract, unveiled Friday, allows for the deployment of the company’s technology on classified military networks.
In 24 hours, ChatGPT uninstalls in the United States jumped 295%, according to Sensor Tower data cited by TechCrunch. A viral campaign to cancel the chatbot led to a 775% increase in one-star reviews on the App Store.
Claude, the competing assistant developed by Anthropic, has risen to the top of Apple’s download charts in the United States, according to Appfigures.
Altman said the company was revising its agreement to include a provision prohibiting domestic surveillance of explicit U.S. persons, citing constitutional and national security laws. The updated terms will prohibit the deliberate tracking or surveillance of Americans, including through commercially obtained personal data.
He added that the Department of Defense had confirmed that its services would not be used by intelligence agencies like the NSA without a separate modification to the contract.
In a follow-up article, Altman emphasized that AI governance must remain subject to democratic control and that no private company should determine the trajectory of society. He said the company intended to cooperate with governments while safeguarding civil liberties.
The company plans to hold an all-hands meeting to address employee concerns, Altman said, describing the episode as one of the first major decisions involving direct government integration that the organization has faced.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our editorial policy.
