Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI wins $200M U.S. defense contract

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 303 posts

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

#251

Post by avgDev »

munificent wrote: post #41
upghost wrote: post #3

Does anyone have any idea what the DoD could possibly want from OpenAI? Less accurate/more sycophantic missiles?

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 Preside…

None of the sources check out.

"We did our best, but sometimes these tools get it wrong." -politician after achieving their goal

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

#252

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

potato3732842 wrote: post #182
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…

If value is such a nebulous term then that should make your job easier not harder because it lets you make comparisons to the "dysfunctional bigco" end of things. The people you are arguing with think government is inefficient. They will be more than satisfied with an honest accounting that results in a conclusion that the government spends 5/10/20% more per result than private sector. Just having an actual number on…

> it lets you make comparisons to the "dysfunctional bigco" end of things.

I don't like to compare governments and companies, personally. They're very different kinds of structures with (hopefully) quite different goals. They probably shouldn't look much like each other.

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

#253

Post by xpe »

ajross wrote: post #243
xpe wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t you think the standard you mention is too low? I do. The comment didn’t advance the conversation. It was a relatively shallow level of engagement; something I’d expect to see in a silly Reddit back and forth. We deserve better here. And to your point: my comment explained my point: “long term R&D on a telecom protocol followed by government implementation and standards and industry adoption versus…”. Of course…

Dunno. I think you're being pedantic about a point that is clearly incorrect. In fact the history of Pentagon-funded R&D is absolutely filled with wild success stories and with embarrassing disasters, as you'd clearly expect from any organization that size. I don't think you're prior is correct at all here, and trying to dismiss a bleedingly obvious counterexample (I mean, come on!) as "shallow" just because it refut…

> Dunno. I think you're being pedantic about a point that is clearly incorrect.

If I was incorrect about a positive (factual) claim, that's fine, I'm happy to learn. However, if we disagree on normative claims (values), that is not about "correctness".

For context, I can't readily think of a time when someone here on HN used the word "pedantic" in a kind way. It seems like the most-socially acceptable form of insult here. It isn't something you say out of respect. Your tone seems angry and combative rather than trying to understand. From my point of view, this is sad and counterproductive. To hoist up a level, this is part of my main point above -- I want there to be a kind of discussion here that is productive: both substantively and in terms of mutual respect.

> the history of Pentagon-funded R&D is absolutely filled with wild success stories and with embarrassing disasters...

I don't disagree. I'm not sure why you think I would. Perhaps you were misunderstanding?

Just to give some context -- which you probably know -- but it will help give us some shared grounding ... DARPA funded TCP/IP by way of the ARPANET, and DARPA gets its funding from the Pentagon. Still, the Pentagon's R&D funding (around $140B) is hugely different in character and scope from DARPA's funding ($4B). Compare (i) a broad Pentagon contract to get access to OpenAI's services with (ii) DARPA's funding for ARPANET. I don't see this as an interesting or relevant comparison: the Pentagon isn't driving fundamental research in (i). There are much better comparison points, such as the Pentagon's contracts with AWS or Azure.

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

#254

Post by matchagaucho »

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.

From what I understood, usage will be largely async, background, AI batch jobs using the latest reasoning models.

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

#255

Post by nopelynopington »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #100

Stop shooting at me, damn it, I'm Sam Altman! Of course, that was an error on my part. I should only be shooting at other people and actually not in the part of the city at all, it's definitely a mistake on my part and I will rectify immediately. Thank you again for pointing it out to me! You're still shooting at me!

You're absolutely right! I've stopped shooting now, and I've also taken all the bullets out of my gun

Bang

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

#256

Post by NHQ »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #187
hansvm wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's something like $3 straight out of my pocket, and it's going to be a flop. That trillion dollar military budget has a lot of semi-unavoidable costs (pensions, salaries, etc), but it has a lot of bullshit like this too. Your argument feels something like the heap paradox [0], "the budget is big, so this thing doesn't matter." The budget is made of things this size though, and all it takes to fix it is to start tak…

200 million is 0.02 percent of 1 trillion. does 30 cent matters to you??? because its not 3 dollar as a comparison but 30 cent is

The entire Trillion is wasted. The entire trillion could be used for public benefit, or simply never "taxed" in the first place.

Very few people would willingly pay for military spending if for example when they buy food they are prompted with the option "do you want to give 30 cents to the military industrial complex?" And that "very few people" would not in sum render 1 Trillion.

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

#258

Post by nilamo »

NHQ wrote: post #250
nilamo wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're also talking about a governmental body. Generating the highest returns possible is a non-goal, and disregarding potentially useful things simply because they aren't the best possible use of funds is an easy way to just never do anything.

The best possible use of funds would be "useful things", and these would produce benefits for people. "Nonproductive" indicates not producing these benefits. Government doing nothing is better than government "potentially" doing things that have no clear benefit or that are definitely nonproductive (like military spending).

I disagree that government doing nothing is better than keeping money flowing. Or, I disagree that money should be removed from the populace via taxation, if that funding doesn't have any path back to the populace. Government doing nothing is a net negative to the entire country, and is worse (imo) than doing "nonproductive" spending. A nonproductive spend is still spend that keeps people employed, families fed, researchers researching, etc.

I don't believe that you guys all believe the military industrial complex should start sitting on cash and collecting interest, even though that's what you're saying. The obvious solution is "they don't need that much money", but that's unrelated to how they spend the money they do have.

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

#259

Post by MPSFounder »

I was discussing Singapore recently. I asked a friend of mine with a PhD on the subject what made it so special (is it the port?). He mentioned if he had to pinpoint one reason, Singapore is a first-world nation in that region of the world because of the rule of law. Corruption was dealt with swiftly and harshly. Looking at contracts given to Elon (Teslas selling on front lawns, SpaceX contracts in the billions funded by our taxes), Sam Altman (who gave the current admin 1 million at inauguration and has reaped many folds), and Tim Cook (for a brief time, Apple being exempted of tarrifs), my heart quickly hurts. The comments are making light of the situation and joking on Defense software, while ignoring the magnitude of this. When favors are gained via bribes, America becomes the very concept we all despised: corruption and favors dictating our governance à la Soviet Union. We saw the Kushners lead talks on the Middle East, we saw inept billionaires leading the department of education (WWE's Linda McMahon), we saw the Adelsons drag us into a war on behalf of Israel, and yet there is something that is particularly funny here. I think I might be missing the joke... My age might be showing, but these headlines are precedents that are undermining the fabric of America. Perhaps we deserve it, since the only response is light hearted jokes, holding paddle signs at union addresses, and protests where Instagram photos and poses, wearing silly hats and holding signs with aphorisms, occur alongside military parades. The circus writes itself, and history books will judge us harshly on this one.
Post reply on HN