Anthropic bid $100 million for the Pentagon drone swarm project, but was not selected; SpaceX and OpenAI camps emerged victorious

According to 1M AI News, earlier this year, Anthropic submitted a proposal to participate in the Pentagon's $100 million Orchestrator Prize Challenge, aiming to develop voice-controlled autonomous drone swarm technology. The challenge, led by the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group under the Special Operations Command and the Defense Innovation Unit, is divided into five phases, progressing from software development to live-fire tests, with later stages focusing on "target perception and sharing" and "from launch to effects." Anthropic's proposal, centered around Claude, translates commander intent into digital commands to coordinate drone swarms, excluding autonomous targeting or weapon decisions, with human oversight throughout. The company also proposed a joint research effort with the Pentagon to securely develop and assess autonomous weapon capabilities.

Anthropic believed that its proposal did not cross its "no-fully-autonomous weapons" red line, as humans could still monitor and terminate the system at any time. However, Anthropic was ultimately not selected, with Bloomberg unable to confirm the reason. Selected proposals include a joint bid from SpaceX and xAI, as well as two defense tech firms that list OpenAI as an AI partner (one of which is a contractor for autonomous military vehicle testing, Applied Intuition). OpenAI's technology will be used for "mission control," aiding in translating voice commands into digital instructions. Just hours after the Pentagon announced a ban on its contractors engaging in any commercial activity with Anthropic last Friday, OpenAI announced a new agreement with the Department of Defense to use its AI tools on a classified cloud system. Anthropic declined to comment. (Bloomberg)