Artificial Intelligence Enters The Battlefield: U.S. Military Invests in OpenAI

In what is billed as a first for the war machine, the U.S. Military has made its inaugural OpenAI purchase for combat forces. Despite OpenAI’s mantra being “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity”, U.S. AFRICOM will be putting this noble cause to the ultimate test.

Just shy of a year after OpenAI hinted at business prospects with the Pentagon, a document acquired by The Intercept reveals U.S. Africa Command's belief that access to OpenAI’s technology is crucial for its mission. The approval document, stamped with 'FEDCON', signifies its confidentiality aside from government officials or contractors. The disclosed value of this purchase was under $15 million.

Similar to other sectors of the Department of Defense, AFRICOM – leading the Pentagon’s manoeuvres across Africa and collaborating with local military allies – is showing a rising interest in cloud computing. The Defense Department currently sources cloud computing from Microsoft through the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability initiative. AFRICOM’s interest in bypassing contractual bureaucracy to secure immediate access to Microsoft Azure cloud services reflects in this new document.

The influence that Microsoft gained over OpenAI following its $10 billion investment last year has resulted in Microsoft selling OpenAI's GPT-4 large language model to defense customers since June 2023. Subsequently, OpenAI announced a collaboration in cybersecurity with DARPA and the use of its tools for an unidentified veterans' suicide prevention initiative.

Despite the stated mission of OpenAI to ensure artificial general intelligence's benefits for all of humanity, this newly acquired document presents the first confirmed purchase of OpenAI's products by a U.S. combatant command whose mission involves the act of killing. The document highlights that access to Microsoft's integrated suite of AI tools and services is vital for AFRICOM to make sense of substantial data for actionable insights, maintaining situational awareness, and responding promptly to evolving threats across Africa.

- CyberBeat