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OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

cnbc.com

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Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#171

Post by grafmax »

potato3732842 wrote: post #148
grafmax wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With rising authoritarianism in the US it is highly likely the military will be increasingly deployed against US citizens. Replacing the humans in the loop with AI removes a key safeguard. We’re heading down a very very dark path.

"the military will be increasingly deployed against US citizen" doesn't happen in a vacuum. It comes at the tail end of a long escalation of government/police force. People don't feel nearly as stupid as they ought to for being complicit in the 30-40yr that lead us to where are now

Globalization broke the unions in the US, the main site of organized popular power. While it’s true that the current state of affairs is part of a longer slide toward authoritarianism, a more accurate etiology would be that it’s the congealing power of the upper class that has been driving the dismantling of democracy. Since concentrated wealth is concentrated power, it is intrinsically anti-democratic. Instead of guilt tripping ourselves we are better off correctly identifying our enemies and organizing together against the forces leading us down this path.

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#172

Post by potato3732842 »

vannevar wrote: post #162
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's do a thought exercise on your loaded question, considering government waste and corruption has been thoroughly covered by journalists since the invention of the free press and are a Google search away for you. If I don't post sources, then you just accept government corruption doesn't exist, simply because nobody Googled for you? If I do post sources, then what? Do you just suddenly change your mind and accept…

I think the point is that while people have indeed groused about government waste since the dawn of government, when people actually study it, they find that the rate of fraud and waste is comparable to the private sector. See, e.g., https://www.epsu.org/sites/default/files/article/files/EN_EF... for web.pdf and https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844... . It's not that there's any more fraud or…

>it's that it's less tolerated

You say that like it's a bad thing.

If my favorite restaurant decides to hire management by nepotism and product degrades I can just not go there.

You can't just not deal with the government so of course the standards ought to be higher.

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#173

Post by cess11 »

GoatInGrey wrote: post #93

$200M is very small when it comes to the world of US defense. Combined with this being formally labeled as a pilot, this can be safely ignored until they reach IOC. Though what this signals is a change in strategic direction regarding autonomous capability. While they won't be rigging an LLM onto a drone, there are many cyber and administrative problem spaces that exist in defense that AI products could meaningfully…

They're also making the Chief Product Officer a soldier.

"The four new Army Reserve Lt. Cols. are Shyam Sankar, Chief Technology Officer for Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former Chief Research Officer for OpenAI."

https://www.army.mil/article/286317/army_launches_detachment...

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#174

Post by tonyhart7 »

NHQ wrote: post #169
tonyhart7 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That 200 Million is chump change only to people who think like chumps. In reality it is total waste, unproductive taxation that doubles as a counter balance to inflation, so doubly wasteful. Chump together all the 100s of millions in waste year over year; the change to your chumping is not good change, its inflation and general impoverishment. Every penny of that 200 is a note in the bank of inflation and degradation…

US literally have 1 trillion military budget, if you think 200 mil its a waste for prototyping a next gen weapon then I would have a bad news for you

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#175

Post by ethbr1 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #160
ethbr1 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not bad faith when it's a legitimate request, which depends on the assertion. If I say the sky is blue because of plane chemtrails, and you ask me for a source, that seems valid. As with any large procurement system, there is moderate government waste in proportional terms, but one of the primary drivers of that waste is... anti-corruption systems operating as intended. If you require 4 more forms than private s…

>It's not bad faith when it's a legitimate request, which depends on the assertion. No offence, but comparing asking for proof of corruption with proof of sky being blue of petrochemicals is a biased bad faith argument. Asking for sources on corruption is more like asking for proof that the earth is round, which is definitely not a legitimate request, but more trolling masquerading like an innocent request and dodge…

> Asking for sources on corruption

Existence of corruption isn't what you asserted.

>> how much taxpayer money governments loose via waste and corruption

That's the assertion you made -- waste and corruption at scale.

It's very much a reasonable question to ask for sources of how much there actually is.

Otherwise, people just post things on the internet insinuating that there's a huge (unspecified) amount.

Is it 1% of the budget? 5%? 25%? (Hint: it should be trivial for you, the claimant, to dig up a source. And it's close to one of those)

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#176

Post by [deleted] »

ethbr1 wrote: post #153
potato3732842 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I do post sources, then what? Do you take your words back and admit that stuff documented by the press it is real? If you post sources he will nitpick them to all hell. It's a classic bad faith argument move since it moves the discussion from one of the subject to one of source validity. You usually see HN's resident handful of chronically linkposting jerks do it in the other direction (i.e. they make some insane…

It's not bad faith when it's a legitimate request, which depends on the assertion. If I say the sky is blue because of plane chemtrails, and you ask me for a source, that seems valid. As with any large procurement system, there is moderate government waste in proportional terms, but one of the primary drivers of that waste is... anti-corruption systems operating as intended. If you require 4 more forms than private s…

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#177

Post by hidingfearful »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #156
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has there been value delivered proportional to the money spent at reasonable market rates? If not, then money was wasted via incompetence, pocketed via corruption, or both. I'm going to unpack this a little. The second sentence does not actually follow from the question asked by the first sentence. "Value" is a loaded term as used here. Not all value is economic. Most value has a degree of judgement involved. I may…

>"Value" is a loaded term as used here. Not all value is economic. Most value has a degree of judgement involved. No it isn't. Most value CAN be objectively measured. I'll give you examples. US outspends all the other developed nations at healthcare, education, childcare and yet is behind them all in actual results with poor education, high infant motility and lower life expectancy. That's what waste and corruption d…

> US outspends all the other developed nations at healthcare, education, childcare and yet is behind them all in actual results with poor education, high infant motility and lower life expectancy

US healthcare and childcare are private, not government. Likewise I suspect much of the education cost is private colleges/schools, not government.

You seem to be arguing that the private sector is less efficient and more corrupt than the public sector.

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#178

Post by xpe »

jmsdnns wrote: post #164
ungreased0675 wrote: post #30

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.

Where did TCP/IP come from? It's on every computer.

Is this substantive engagement with the earlier comment? I’m not seeing it. You probably know the examples are different (long term R&D on a telecom protocol followed by government implementation and standards and industry adoption … versus fairly early-days access to a GenAI model tuned for defense contexts).

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#179

Post by segfaultex »

jmsdnns wrote: post #164
ungreased0675 wrote: post #30

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.

Where did TCP/IP come from? It's on every computer.

Is your implication that MSFT will bundle the tool in their windows dist?

I wonder how that will work with the networking reqs the DoD has. Probably some direct link to a gov VPC I suppose.

Re: OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

#180

Post by potato3732842 »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #174
NHQ wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 200 Million is chump change only to people who think like chumps. In reality it is total waste, unproductive taxation that doubles as a counter balance to inflation, so doubly wasteful. Chump together all the 100s of millions in waste year over year; the change to your chumping is not good change, its inflation and general impoverishment. Every penny of that 200 is a note in the bank of inflation and degradation…

US literally have 1 trillion military budget, if you think 200 mil its a waste for prototyping a next gen weapon then I would have a bad news for you

The nickels and dimes add the F up. Stop acting like they don't.

Save perhaps the most extreme "I spend 70% of my six figure income on rent because I want to live alone somewhere trendy" of household budgets this is true for literally everything from the smallest business in the smalles of small towns to the federal government.

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