Sam Altman: Amen.dment to Work with Department of Defense to clarify that AI will not be used to engage in surveillance that violates the privacy rights of American citizens

BlockBeats News, March 3rd, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman retweeted an internal memo stating, "We have been collaborating with the Department of Defense (DoD) to make some additions to the agreement to clarify our principles. We will modify the agreement to add the following clause as a supplement to the existing terms: 'Under applicable law, including the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the 1947 National Security Act, and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), AI systems shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of United States citizens and nationals. For the avoidance of doubt, DoD understands that this restriction prohibits the intentional tracking, monitoring, or surveillance of United States citizens or nationals, including through the acquisition or use of commercially available personal or identifiable information.'"

Protecting the civil liberties of American citizens is of utmost importance. Given the significant external interest in this matter, we want to specifically clarify this point, including concerning information obtained through commercial means. As is our consistent practice in iterative deployment, we will continue to learn and refine.

I believe this is a critical amendment, with the DoD also confirming that our services will not be used by DoD intelligence agencies (e.g., NSA). To be absolutely clear, we wish to operate through democratic processes. Technology is currently immature in many respects, and many areas remain unclear about the trade-offs required for security. In discussions over the weekend, I reiterated that Anthropic should not be designated as SCR and hope the DoD will provide them with terms similar to ours in the agreement."