By David Jeans, Jeffrey Dastin, Mike Stone and Deepa Seetharaman
NEW YORK, Feb 27 (Reuters) – A feud between the Pentagon and top artificial intelligence lab Anthropic is set to come to a head by 5:01 p.m. (2201 GMT) on Friday over concerns about how the military could use AI at war.
The dispute, barreling toward a deadline set by the Pentagon for resolution, is widely seen as a referendum on how powerful AI could be deployed by the military and how its risks are managed.
The Pentagon wants any lawful use to be allowed and has threatened Anthropic’s business if the startup does not scrap additional guardrails.
“It’s a shot across the bow about the future of artificial intelligence and its use on the battlefield,” Chris Miller, the former acting secretary of defense, told Reuters. He added that the outcome will “be an acid test for those companies that claim to want to use AI humanely.”
The months-long dispute has divided some industry leaders, military officials and lawmakers over whether AI should be wielded without constraints when its creator Anthropic said the technology was not yet reliable for fully autonomous weapons.
Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin weighed in on Thursday: “The average person does not think we should allow weapons systems to get into war and kill people without a human being overseeing that in some way.”
Speaking at a confirmation hearing for two assistant defense secretary nominees, Slotkin added: “I certainly don’t think any American, Democrat or Republican, wants mass surveillance on the American people.”
The Pentagon, which the Trump administration renamed the Department of War, has pushed back on the dilemma as a false choice “peddled by leftists in the media.”
“The Department of War has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement,” Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell posted on X Thursday.
NEGOTIATIONS FALTER
The Pentagon has signed $200-million ceiling agreements with major AI labs in the past year, including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. It is pushing companies to agree to scrap their usage policies in favor of abiding by an all-lawful use clause.
Anthropic, continuing these talks, has maintained red lines over the military’s use of its Claude AI models for autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. Anthropic was first among these AI companies to work with classified information, through a supply deal via cloud provider Amazon.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, famous for quitting OpenAI in 2020 over concerns about AI technology’s stewardship, has warned that AI has advanced faster than the law.
