Judging from how the DoD currently buys software, lots of money will be spent, many headlines will be written, awards will be handed out, and zero software will make it on to user workstations. End users will continue to use Excel for everything.
tonyhart7 · 3h ago
200 mil is chump change for them, if prototype turned to be good then good for them but if its not then they are not worry
TZubiri · 1h ago
Not all software is made public and used in workstations, especially not in military
0_____0 · 1h ago
Would you mind elaborating a bit?
Waterluvian · 54m ago
“Let’s take another whack at real-time object identification built into night vision goggles.”
(Made-up but plausible example)
tough · 39m ago
just giving the whole DoD chatgpt that's deployed in their servers would be pretty useful i guess for them?
Avicebron · 4h ago
Let's hope before they wire it directly to the controls "because speed" they've trained it on Stanislav Petrov up down and backwards..
> On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to four more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm.
pyuser583 · 2h ago
I heard one thing AI is very good at declassifying documents.
d--b · 3m ago
So much for humanity’s greater good Sam.
upghost · 4h ago
Does anyone have any idea what the DoD could possibly want from OpenAI? Less accurate/more sycophantic missiles?
notesinthefield · 4h ago
Some of the more popular models (NIPRGPT, the various DREN models) are “soft banned” and DoD is in need of a unified solution. MSFT’s GCC HIGH and GovCloud implementations have been slow to materialize. But more to your point - everyone is using LLM’s to pick up the slack from layoffs. Im sitting in meetings and watching my gov customers generate documentation and proposals everyday. Everything the commercial world uses AI for the US gov is doing the same. Cant directly speak to targeting but you can bet your ass there are 100 different offensive projects trying to integrate AI into ISR work and the like.
munificent · 3h ago
1. Secretary of Defense feels like bombing some place. Asks aide to write a report on, justification, logistics, and consequences.
2. Aide tells subordinate to write report.
3. Subordinate uses ChatGPT to write the 100-page report. Sends it to aide.
4. Aide uses ChatGPT to summarize report. Sends summary to SecDef.
5. SecDef accidentally posts summary on publicly-accessible social media page, then forwards to President.
6. Bombs go boom.
jonas21 · 28m ago
It's right there in TFA:
> to help the Defense Department identify and prototype how frontier AI can transform its administrative operations, from improving how service members and their families get health care, to streamlining how they look at program and acquisition data, to supporting proactive cyber defense
In other words, it sounds like it's not that different from what any other large enterprise would want.
ginkgotree · 4h ago
Yeah, tons. SIGNT / HUMINT analysis. After action report summaries. war gaming to optimize deterrence. human machine teaming. LLM-in-the-loop for warfighters. rapid code gen in field deployments for units to spin up software solutions. The list is endless, imho.
felixgallo · 2h ago
llm-in-the-loop for whatever a 'warfighter' is is basically the opposite of how fighting wars should go.
ginkgotree · 12m ago
why? it could help them asses threats, civilians / avoid collateral damage. Like any weapon or technology, it depends on its use. warfighter is the modern industry / academic term used for "soldier."
kube-system · 2h ago
The DoD does plenty of things beyond putting boots on the ground. They’re the world’s largest employer. They have all the same boring problems that any employer has at gigantic scale.
ginkgotree · 12m ago
Yep, pretty much.
somenameforme · 1h ago
Automatically generated, native sounding, propaganda at scale - capable of interacting in real time. This was always the MIC money endgame for LLMs. This is also probably why they are enlisting tech execs from Meta, OpenAI, etc.
ChatGPT, do you know where the General left his keys?
impulser_ · 3h ago
You will be surprise how much work at the DoD has nothing to do with weapons.
paxys · 3h ago
> “This contract, with a $200 million ceiling, will bring OpenAI’s industry-leading expertise to help the Defense Department identify and prototype how frontier AI can transform its administrative operations, from improving how service members and their families get health care, to streamlining how they look at program and acquisition data, to supporting proactive cyber defense,”
Translated - they'll hand out GPT access to a bunch of service members and administrators. Except the UI will have a big DoD logo and words like "SECURE" and "CLASSIFIED" will be displayed on it a few dozen times.
01100011 · 4h ago
You realize that the DoD has a huge amount of normal business work like logistics, project management, people management, benefits management, etc? Right?
dmd · 3h ago
The United States Military (Waterhouse has decided) is first and foremost an unfathomable network of typists and file clerks, secondarily a stupendous mechanism for moving stuff from one part of the world to another, and last and least a fighting organization. —Cryptonomicon
rkagerer · 4h ago
I suspect it's more than that.
“Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains,” the Defense Department said.
notesinthefield · 4h ago
“National security challenges” is incredibly broad, providing the right size of boots to USCG rescue swimmers could be considered a national security challenge.
koakuma-chan · 3h ago
it says _critical_
kube-system · 2h ago
Ain’t nothing more critical than rescue!
guywithahat · 4h ago
Knowing the DoD, I bet it's not. I bet they just want their own secure servers or some sort of corporate data/encryption management, and they're willing to pay out the nose to not have to use asksage or some terrible DoD friendly clone
piyushpr134 · 1h ago
An on premise deployment ?
jasonfrost · 57m ago
Easy PT plans
LightBug1 · 4h ago
One AI per person ...
m3kw9 · 4h ago
Sycophantic missiles would be desirable
an0malous · 4h ago
I would guess it’s for mass surveillance. Even just the ability to extract names and entities from audio, video, and text on every piece of public media would be useful.
MOARDONGZPLZ · 4h ago
DOD doesn’t really do this
an0malous · 3h ago
Maybe they’d like to start
stonogo · 4h ago
Only because they currently contract it out to Palantir (at least the bits that NSA isn't handling)
zmgsabst · 1h ago
NSA is a DOD organization.
> The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI).
> William J. Hartman is a United States Army lieutenant general who has served as the acting commander of United States Cyber Command, director of the National Security Agency,
They’re staffed by military people (alongside civilians) and their commander is always military — because much of what they do (abroad) could be construed as acts of war.
Isn't this part of the true definition of "AGI" and its all for the benefit of humanity?
Or is it that are we finally realizing that we are getting scammed again on these so-called promises and it was all a grift.
Maybe we should just wake up.
lyu07282 · 1h ago
People are practically irrelevant infants at this point. We are about to repeat the Iraq war, point by point with universal agreement. The same people in charge are recycling the same propaganda, selling the same lies to in many cases quite literally the same people again and it's working, so I don't know why you are expecting anyone to ever "wake up".
trhway · 45m ago
On the way to benefit all humanity MS helped Sam back then, and now MS will get to wake up to the real Sam :)
“OpenAI executives have considered accusing Microsoft, the company's major backer, of anticompetitive behavior in their partnership …
OpenAI's effort could involve seeking a federal regulatory review of the terms of its contract with Microsoft for potential violations of antitrust law, as well as a public campaign,…“
more_corn · 4h ago
This gives me a sick feeling of unease.
bluealienpie · 1h ago
That's the rational response.
gxs · 3h ago
This, this is why I have such an issue with the amount of taxes I pay
Not because I’m anti social programs the way people like to immediately assume, but because of dumb shit like this that I have no control over
kube-system · 2h ago
Honestly, why do you think it is dumb?
I think it is pretty well established that LLMs can be a great time saver when used appropriately. Why wouldn’t you want that productivity gain at the government level?
_def · 2h ago
Reading and writing reports when peoples lives are on the line is arguably a hot topic, no?
kube-system · 2h ago
One would imagine that a $200m contract would come with at least some minimal amounts of guidance on best practices. The DoD is not a spring chicken with it comes to automation. They’ve been a perennial early adopter.
layoric · 4h ago
That should shore up their financials given their.. checks notes $12B in operational costs. /s
Hope it's worth it.
bix6 · 3h ago
$10B run rate now so they can just plug the gap with $2B in ads!?! Hot DoD singles near you! Would you like me to generate an image of their stealth package ;) ?
dluan · 4h ago
directly hooking up the AI to the nuclear button is which chapter of the dont build the torment nexus book
fabfoe · 3h ago
Isn’t that the Department of Energy that does that, not DoD?
(Made-up but plausible example)
> On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to four more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm.
2. Aide tells subordinate to write report.
3. Subordinate uses ChatGPT to write the 100-page report. Sends it to aide.
4. Aide uses ChatGPT to summarize report. Sends summary to SecDef.
5. SecDef accidentally posts summary on publicly-accessible social media page, then forwards to President.
6. Bombs go boom.
> to help the Defense Department identify and prototype how frontier AI can transform its administrative operations, from improving how service members and their families get health care, to streamlining how they look at program and acquisition data, to supporting proactive cyber defense
In other words, it sounds like it's not that different from what any other large enterprise would want.
Translated - they'll hand out GPT access to a bunch of service members and administrators. Except the UI will have a big DoD logo and words like "SECURE" and "CLASSIFIED" will be displayed on it a few dozen times.
“Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains,” the Defense Department said.
> The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency
> William J. Hartman is a United States Army lieutenant general who has served as the acting commander of United States Cyber Command, director of the National Security Agency,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Hartman
They’re staffed by military people (alongside civilians) and their commander is always military — because much of what they do (abroad) could be construed as acts of war.
Or is it that are we finally realizing that we are getting scammed again on these so-called promises and it was all a grift.
Maybe we should just wake up.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
“OpenAI executives have considered accusing Microsoft, the company's major backer, of anticompetitive behavior in their partnership …
OpenAI's effort could involve seeking a federal regulatory review of the terms of its contract with Microsoft for potential violations of antitrust law, as well as a public campaign,…“
Not because I’m anti social programs the way people like to immediately assume, but because of dumb shit like this that I have no control over
I think it is pretty well established that LLMs can be a great time saver when used appropriately. Why wouldn’t you want that productivity gain at the government level?
Hope it's worth it.
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