For OpenAI, securing a high-profile deal with the Pentagon would normally be grounds for celebration. Instead, the company is navigating a wave of backlash from both staffers and consumers over how its AI tech could be weaponized.

CEO Sam Altman announced the agreement, which gave the Pentagon access to its AI models, on February 28, days after rival Anthropic rejected a similar deal.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said his company wouldn't agree to anything without assurances that the technology wouldn't be used to power autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance.

"We cannot in good conscience accede to their request," Amodei said at the time.

Altman moved to amend the deal amid mounting criticism. It wasn't enough to quell the backlash, however, which came fast and threatened both OpenAI's reputation and its reign as the world's most popular chatbot maker.

Key robotics staffer quitsCaitlin Kalinowski, a hardware executive who joined OpenAI from Meta in 2024 to lead its robotics division, announced her resignation on Saturday.In a post on X, she denounced OpenAI's deal with the Pentagon."AI has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got," she wrote.A spokesperson confirmed Kalinowski's departure and defended the Defense Department agreement."We believe our agreement with the Pentagon creates a workable path for responsible national security uses of AI while making clear our red lines: no domestic surveillance and no autonomous weapons," the spokesperson told Business Insider. "We recognize that people have strong views about these issues and we will continue to engage in discussion with employees, government, civil society, and communities around the world."

OpenAI employees push backMany other OpenAI staffers have also publicly criticized the company's Pentagon deal."i personally don't think this deal was worth it," Aidan McLaughlin, a research scientist at OpenAI, wrote on X.Another employee told CNN that many of them "really respect" Anthropic for refusing the Pentagon's deal.Clive Chan, a technical staffer, wrote in an X post that he believed OpenAI's contract barred the use of its models for mass weapons or mass domestic surveillance. Chan wrote that he's advocating for the company to share more information."If we later learn this is not the case, then I will advocate internally to terminate the contract," Chan wrote.Even before the deal, nearly 900 former and current OpenAI and Google staffers signed a joint petition supporting Anthropic, one of their primary competitors, and opposing the use of their companies' technology for weapons that can kill without human oversight and mass surveillance."The Pentagon is negotiating with Google and OpenAI to try to get them to agree to what Anthropic has refused," the petition said.

Claude overtakes ChatGPT as consumers protest OpenAI's Pentagon dealAfter the deal, users flocked to Claude, criticizing Altman's decision on social media. Scores of Reddit posts urged consumers to "cancel ChatGPT."Uninstalls of ChatGPT spiked by more than 295% on February 28, the day after the deal was announced. By Monday, Claude ranked No. 1 among the most downloaded free apps on the US Apple App Store. It remained in the top spot as of Saturday.Claude is also now at the top of the list of most-downloaded productivity apps on the App Store. ChatGPT and Google's Gemini are close behind, as is xAI's Grok.OpenAI also faced IRL protests.Activists gathered outside its Mission Bay headquarters in San Francisco on Tuesday, calling for a "QuitGPT" movement. Their anger with OpenAI went far beyond just the Pentagon deal.One of the protesters, Sarah Gao, told Business Insider that Altman lived in a "super villain's mansion" and used his "billionaire buddies" to help President Donald Trump with "his disastrous budget bills that stole trillions of dollars from everyday Americans just to line their pockets."

OpenAI's deal also grabbed lawmakers' attentionIn response to the drama between Anthropic and the Pentagon, and then OpenAI, California Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo introduced an amendment to the Defense Production Act that would prohibit the Defense Department "from retaliating against developers for instituting safeguards on high-risk technologies."The amendment failed on a 16-25 vote in the House Financial Services Committee."Full disclosure: I am a Claude subscriber, though I can't claim to have used it to create any homicidal bots," Liccardo said during a committee meeting. "Regardless, when the company that designs and builds the jet fighter tells us when to use the brakes, we should listen. Instead, the Pentagon's bureaucrats and lawyers believe they know better. They think they can fly the plane without brakes."Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii also announced on X that he had "downloaded Claude."

Altman does damage controlIn the days after the deal and subsequent backlash, Altman took steps to make amends.He fielded questions publicly on X the day after, at one point saying that the process "was definitely rushed, and the optics don't look good."In an internal memo sent on March 2 and later shared on X, Altman said that OpenAI had revised the contract to include clearer safeguards preventing the Pentagon from using its models for mass domestic surveillance.Altman said he would rework the contract, adding explicit prohibitions on using OpenAI's technology on "commercially acquired" data, which had not been covered in the original terms.Altman also again said in the memo that he "shouldn't have rushed" to get the deal out, saying "it just looked opportunistic and sloppy." (Business Insider Africa)

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