Sam Altman says OpenAI will tweak its Pentagon deal after surveillance backlash(businessinsider.com)
businessinsider.com
Sam Altman says OpenAI will tweak its Pentagon deal after surveillance backlash
https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-amending-contract-with-pentagon-amid-backlash-mass-surveillance-anthropic-2026-3
5 comments
I think the real question is trust. Once a company starts working with the Pentagon, people will naturally assume the capabilities will expand over time. Even if today’s contract has limits, those limits can always change later.
It has been proven and blessed by SCOTUS that an email and continued use is sufficient cause to derive implied consent. Contracts are now essentially pointless in their one sidedness. Anyone pointing to contractual limitations as justification of their position to a third party should find that third party looking them dead in the eye and pointing out all it would take for the justifier to be "right" in this circumstance is changing your TOS long enough to prove your point to me, sending an email that will never be read, then as soon as I'm gone changing the terms back to whatever else and sending another email. By de-frictioning contract law to enable click-wrap and EULA, we've completely undermined the semantic intent of the mechanism; which was to be a durable statement of an agreement between two parties that both agree to be bound to. When there is no binding on the originating party from changing the terms, there is no assurance to anyone else the terms don't change from second to second to the benefit of the originator of the contract.
Sometimes, the friction is the feature.
Sometimes, the friction is the feature.
huh more people are cancelling than I expected then!