OpenAI Partners with US National Laboratories to Advance AI Research and Nuclear Security
OpenAI announced on Thursday that the US National Laboratories will be utilizing its latest artificial intelligence models for scientific research and nuclear weapons security. The partnership will allow up to 15,000 scientists working at the National Laboratories to access OpenAI’s reasoning-focused o1 series. The company will also work with Microsoft, its lead investor, to deploy one of its models on the supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, powered by technology from Nvidia and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.
The partnership aims to enhance cybersecurity to protect the US power grid, identify new approaches to treating and preventing diseases, and deepen understanding of fundamental mathematics and physics, as well as work on nuclear weapons, focusing on reducing the risk of nuclear war and securing nuclear materials and weapons worldwide. Some OpenAI researchers with security clearances will consult on the project.
This partnership comes on the heels of OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT Gov, an AI platform built specifically for US government use. The platform allows government agencies to feed non-public, sensitive information into OpenAI’s models while operating within their own secure hosting environments.
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 move is part of a series of efforts by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman to build bridges with the US government. Altman has contributed $1 million to the inauguration, attended the event, and recently expressed his admiration for President Donald Trump, saying that watching him “more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him.” OpenAI is also part of the recently announced Stargate project, which involves billions of dollars in investment into US AI infrastructure.
