Open AI person quits over lack of guardrails on military AI use.

[applegrove]

Last edited Sat Mar 7, 2026, 10:50 PM - Edit history (1)

OpenAI head of robotics just resigned over company deal with the Pentagon saying…

“Surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got”

— jael holzman (@jael.bsky.social) 2026-03-07T19:05:38.134Z

[Bread and Circuses]

1. Yeah! thanks ! A woman speaks up ! We need ALL the engineers to say NO

[pat_k]

2. Sounds it would be more accurate to say she quit over lack of guardrails.

Last edited Sat Mar 7, 2026, 11:41 PM - Edit history (1)

It sure sounds like Caitlin Kalinowski disputes Sam Altman's statement about the agreement with the DoWD. Specifically, that:

We have three main red lines that guide our work with the DoWD which are generally shared by several other frontier labs:

No use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance.
No use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems.
No use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions (e.g. systems such as “social credit”).

Clearly, in her view, the tools being provided under the agreement can be used for "surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight" and "lethal autonomy without human authorization."

I suspect there are protections that could be built into the tools that would make it impossible for the the tools to be deployed to carry out mass surveillance or to direct autonomous weapons systems -- protections that HAVE NOT been built in (or have been taken out) in favor of a written agreement under which the DoD "promises" not to misuse the tools in these ways.

If my suspicion is correct, we all know that promises from any department or agency co-opted by the corrupt people of this regime are MEANINGLESS. If the design of the tools enables them to be used in ways that violate the agreement, those tools WILL be used in ways that violate the agreement.

Added on edit:
I can't help but wonder if any agreement entered into with an entity called the "Department of War" isn't meaningless because there is no such entity. There has been no act of congress to change the name, so the name "Department of War" is a fiction. I am guessing that the actual contracts are with the DoD. If DoW shows up in the actual contract, there is probably some disclaimer about it actually referring to the DoD.

[applegrove]

3. Right you are.