Today Dario Amodei released a statement expressing strong willingness to collaborate with the US military, emphasizing they're "on the same side." After all that talk... Let's recap:
— How it started: The Pentagon demanded AI developers remove strict ethical restrictions — primarily those preventing neural networks from being used for defense needs, autonomous weapons, and surveillance.
— Pride and punishment: Anthropic stood firm and refused. In response, the US Department of Defense (at the Trump administration's behest) unprecedentedly labeled them a "national security threat" and cut them off from direct military contracts.
— Competitors' chess move: That same day, while Anthropic was getting banned, OpenAI swiftly grabbed the Pentagon's lucrative contract. Sam Altman proved far more flexible on military ethics and signed the papers.
— Leak and apologies: Amid all this chaos, Dario Amodei wrote a sharp message in an internal Slack chat criticizing the authorities' actions. The message was naturally leaked to the press. Now Anthropic's CEO has to publicly apologize for his "tone".
Bottom line: after fighting with the DoD and losing contracts to competitors, Anthropic is now ready to provide its technology to the military practically for free, just so they don't lose access to needed tools mid-operation.
Well. It happens. The interesting question is whether people who mass-unsubscribed from ChatGPT will now do the same with Anthropic. If not, Anthropic simply gained significant user growth and PR. And didn't lose military contracts.