OpenAI partners with U.S. National Laboratories on scientific research, nuclear weapons security

OpenAI on Thursday said the U.S. National Laboratories will be using its latest artificial intelligence models for scientific research and nuclear weapons security.

Under the agreement, up to 15,000 scientists working at the National Laboratories may be able to access OpenAI’s reasoning-focused o1 series. OpenAI will also work with Microsoft, its lead investor, to deploy one of its models on Venado, the supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a release. Venado is powered by technology from Nvidia and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the partnership at a company event called “Building to Win: AI Economics,” in Washington, D.C.

According to OpenAI, the new partnership will involve scientists using OpenAI’s technology to enhance cybersecurity to protect the U.S. power grid, identify new approaches to treating and preventing diseases and deepen understanding of fundamental mathematics and physics.

It will also involve work on nuclear weapons, “focused on reducing the risk of nuclear war and securing nuclear materials and weapons worldwide,” the company wrote. Some OpenAI researchers with security clearances will consult on the project.

Earlier this week, OpenAI released ChatGPT Gov, an AI platform built specifically for U.S. government use. OpenAI billed the new platform as a step beyond ChatGPT Enterprise as far as security. It will allow government agencies to feed “non-public, sensitive information” into OpenAI’s models while operating within their own secure hosting environments, the company said.

OpenAI said that since the beginning of 2024, more than 90,000 employees of federal, state and local governments have generated over 18 million prompts within ChatGPT, using the technology to translate and summarize documents, write and draft policy memos, generate code and build applications.

The government partnership follows a series of moves by Altman and OpenAI that appear to be targeted at appeasing President Donald Trump. Altman contributed $1 million to the inauguration, attended the event last week alongside other tech CEOs and recently signaled his admiration for the president.

Altman wrote on X that watching Trump “more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him,” adding that “he will be incredible for the country in many ways.” OpenAI is also part of the recently announced Stargate project that involves billions of dollars in investment into U.S. AI infrastructure.

As OpenAI steps up its ties to the government, a Chinese rival is blowing up in the U.S. DeepSeek, an AI startup lab out of China, saw its app soar to the top of Apple’s App Store rankings this week and roiled U.S. markets on reports that its powerful model was trained at a fraction of the cost of U.S. competitors.

Altman described DeepSeek’s R1 model as “impressive,” and wrote on X that “we will obviously deliver much better models and also it’s legit invigorating to have a new competitor!”

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