Our approach to government and national security partnerships

Governments are beginning to use frontier AI systems for increasingly important work, including in national security. That creates new imperatives for AI labs, governments, and civil society to work together on how these tools should be used in sensitive settings. 

We believe democratic societies should be able to use AI to protect people, defend critical infrastructure, deliver public services, and respond to emerging threats, including in areas like cyber defense and biological security where AI can meaningfully advantage defenders. But increasingly capable AI systems must be deployed in ways that reinforce democratic accountability, meaningful human judgment, and the rule of law, and that strengthen democratic institutions rather than concentrate power.

Today we are publishing OpenAI’s National Security Principles to offer transparency into how we approach government partnerships and national security uses of our technology.

These principles reflect a cross-company effort to develop a more comprehensive approach to our work in the national security and law enforcement area as our technology continues to advance. We engaged a leading national security expert, David Kris, to help facilitate the process and provide his independent judgment, held listening sessions across the company, and engaged employees representing a range of teams from research and safety to policy and government partnerships.

These principles apply to our current and future national security and law enforcement partnerships, including our existing work with the Department of War. When we announced our agreement earlier this year, we articulated several contractual restrictions: no use of OpenAI technology for mass domestic surveillance, no use of OpenAI technology to direct autonomous weapons systems, and no use of OpenAI technology for high-stakes automated decisions. Those restrictions are consistent with the principles we are sharing today.