An ethics expert raised concerns amongst OpenAI competitors about an executive who attended the Taylor Swift concert in New Orleans with Army Secretary Christine Wormuth (pictured).
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Among the 1000’s of fans who screamed in awe at Taylor Swift’s New Orleans concert over the weekend was Katrina Mulligan, OpenAI’s national security policy and partnerships manager. In a photograph she posted According to LinkedIn, Mulligan is grinning broadly behind his sparkling heart-shaped glasses. Next to her is Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth, wearing a Swift-inspired mirrorball cowboy hat.
“I visited Taylor Swift with the Secretary of the Army in New Orleans and it was just as EPIC as it sounds.” Mulligan posted on Sunday.
Less epic was the optics of a high-ranking government official dating a top adviser to an AI company that has recently been competing for and winning government contracts. After drop a clause In its January terms of service banning “military and warfare” applications, the world’s largest AI company, recently valued at $157 billion, aggressively courted the Pentagon. Last week’s Intercept reported in regards to the first publicly known example of the Pentagon’s use of OpenAI applications through a contract with Microsoft, which resells OpenAI’s products.
US Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth attended certainly one of Taylor Swift’s shows in New Orleans with an OpenAI executive.
LinkedIn/Katrina Mulligan
U.S. Army spokesman Colonel Randee Farrell said in an announcement that Wormuth attended the concert “in her personal capacity” and at her own expense. Her “personal friendship with Ms. Mulligan is based on nearly two years of working together at the Pentagon,” Farrell said. “Their conversations at the event focused on the music and energy of the concert.”
Farrell added that the Army has no current or pending contracts with OpenAI.
OpenAI spokeswoman Liz Bourgeois said in an announcement that Wormuth and Mulligan “are friends and made these plans when Katrina was working for Secretary Wormuth and long before Katrina joined OpenAI.” (Following publication, Mulligan updated her LinkedIn Post to incorporate Wormuth’s name and never her title.)
That close connection may very well be a priority for OpenAI’s competitors, said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who focuses on government ethics. “Those competing with OpenAI for contracts may be wondering whether the Secretary of the Army will have to forego involvement in decision-making if she has a close personal relationship with Mulligan,” Clark said. “If I were the Secretary of the Army and Mulligan’s girlfriend, I would ask them to remove the post – or at least edit it to remove the reference to my official position.”
Wormuth, who was sworn in as Secretary of the Army in May 2021 after being nominated by President Joe Biden, has been a vocal proponent of AI on the Pentagon. Shortly after her appointment she announced that their top priority for the Army was to change into “data-centric” on the battlefield. She has described A future where AI-powered robots are the primary line of attack, earlier this 12 months revealed The Army used AI to discover potential recruits.
With the Pentagon’s growing interest in generative AI applications, OpenAI is attempting to construct a military sales operation. earlier this month Forbes reported that OpenAI has partnered with Carahsoft, a contractor that gives tech firms a neater approach to sell their services to the federal government, including the Pentagon, through so-called contract vehicles. To date, the Carahsoft partnership has sold small ChatGPT licenses price a whole lot of 1000’s of dollars to NASA, the National Gallery of Art, and the Department of Agriculture. But OpenAI can be certainly one of several vendors included in a Carahsoft contracting vehicle for the Pentagon called Computer Hardware, Enterprise Software and Solutions (CHESS), which goals to be “the Army’s primary source of commercial IT.” although there isn’t a contract to finish it.
The contracting efforts ran parallel to a government-focused hiring boom at OpenAI. In June and again this month, former National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone was appointed to its board recruited a former White House official as chief economist. Dane Stuckey, the previous security chief of the defense company Palantir, also announced This month, he joined OpenAI in the identical role, citing OpenAI’s goal of “enabling democratic institutions to derive maximum benefit from these technologies and advance the development of secure AGI for the world.”
Mulligan joined OpenAI the identical month the corporate modified its terms of service to permit collaboration with the Pentagon. A protracted-time national security adviser – with stints on the White House, the Department of Justice and the National Counterterrorism Center – she most recently served as Chief of Staff to Secretary Wormuth, where she provided “strategic advice on public policy, public affairs, strategic communications, legislative affairs, operations and management.” after to her Linkedin. Soon after joining the Secretary’s staff, she was posted to X: “I’m not trying to brag, but as chief of staff @SecArmy Christine Wormuth could be the best job in the Pentagon.” Earlier this year, she shared a picture of the Army secretary wearing a leopard-print coat alongside US soldiers in military uniform. “Want to see some boss lady energy?” Mulligan wrote. “I really like her SO much. MUCH.”
In her Taylor Swift post over the weekend, several OpenAI employees cheered her on. Felipe Millon, who leads OpenAI’s public sales, responded with a “fire” emoji. Another OpenAI worker, Anna Min, wrote, “I love this.” In response to a colleague who commented on the post, Mulligan wrote, “I’ve definitely reached my peak.”
Rashi Shrivastava contributed reporting.
