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- Caitlin Kalinowski, OpenAI's head of robotics, said on Saturday that she had resigned.
- In an X post, she criticized OpenAI's deal with the Pentagon.
- The deal raised concerns over the use of AI surveillance and lethal autonomous systems.
Caitlin Kalinowski, a hardware executive who joined OpenAI from Meta in 2024 and leads its robotics division, said she is resigning from the company.
In a post on X on Saturday, Kalinowski criticized OpenAI's recent deal with the Pentagon.
"AI has an important role in national security. But surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got," she wrote.
She called her resignation a matter of principle, and said she still deeply respects OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the team and is proud of their robotics work.
In response to a request for comment from Business Insider, a spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed Kalinowski's resignation.
"We believe our agreement with the Pentagon creates a workable path for responsible national security uses of AI while making clear our red lines: no domestic surveillance and no autonomous weapons. We recognize that people have strong views about these issues and we will continue to engage in discussion with employees, government, civil society and communities around the world," OpenAI's spokesperson write.
OpenAI struck a deal with the Pentagon last week, allowing the Department of Defense to use its AI products. The agreement came after its rival Anthropic refused a similar deal over concerns that the technology would be used for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons.
Anthropic has since been effectively blacklisted in Washington — with President Trump calling it a "radical left, woke company" in a Truth Social post and demanding federal agencies abandon its use — While, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk to national security, and said any company Defense Department contracts would be barred from liaising with the company.
On the user front, however, OpenAI's agreement has sparked some backlash against the company — and doubled as a public-relations win for Anthropic. Since last Saturday, Anthropic's chatbot Claude has steadily pushed ahead of OpenAI's ChatGPT in downloads.
Data from Appfigures, an app intelligence firm, showed that Claude surpassed ChatGPT in the US for the first time on Saturday. Claude's US downloads were up 240% month-over-month in February, Appfigures estimated, to 1.1 million more than the previous month.
Altman has tried repeatedly to diffuse the tension surrounding the deal. He's hosted In an information question and answer session on X last Saturday he said that the goal of the agreement "to de-escalate things," adding that he is ambivalent on whether it was the right now.
