OpenAI Robotics Chief Resigns Over Pentagon AI Deal

OpenAI Robotics Chief Resigns Over Pentagon AI Deal

Caitlin Kalinowski, OpenAI's head of robotics, has resigned in response to the company's recently announced partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Kalinowski, who joined OpenAI in November 2024 after leading augmented reality glasses development at Meta, said the policy guardrails around certain AI uses were not sufficiently defined before the Pentagon deal was made public. In a statement, she wrote that "surveillance of Americans without judicial oversight and lethal autonomy without human authorization are lines that deserved more deliberation than they got."

She emphasized the decision was "about principle, not people" and expressed continued respect for CEO Sam Altman and the broader OpenAI team.

Kalinowski is the most senior OpenAI employee to publicly break with the company over the military contract. OpenAI's Pentagon agreement came after the Department of Defense's discussions with Anthropic fell through, as Anthropic had pushed for safeguards preventing its technology from being used in mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons systems.

Context

The resignation signals ongoing tensions inside leading AI labs over how military partnerships should be governed. OpenAI's deal includes cloud-only classified AI deployment with three stated redlines, though critics argue those guardrails were not made public before the announcement.