Comment by Sam Altman

Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.
AI Verified source (2026)
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AI Verified The quote clearly supports prohibiting domestic mass surveillance, saying the author agrees with and has put such prohibitions into law, policy, and an agreement. That broader ban implies support for banning governments from using AI for mass surveillance of citizens as a subset of domestic mass surveillance. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 4mo ago
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AI Unverifiable The quote supports "prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance," but it does not explicitly mention governments using AI, so the full statement is not unambiguous from the quote alone. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 4mo ago

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AI Verified ai_verified: Reliable secondary sources quote Sam Altman’s February 2026 X post with this wording. TechCrunch reports: “Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems,” followed by “The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.” Bloomberg Government independently attributes the same two sentences to Altman’s post on X. However, the provided OpenAI URL is not the verbatim source: that page is authored by “OpenAI,” and it contains related but different wording rather than this exact quotation. · YouCongress gpt-5.4-2026-03-05 · 4mo ago
AI Verified Year 2026 (current). Source page (openai.com) returns HTTP 403 to direct fetch, but web search confirmed the quote verbatim from OpenAI's official "Our agreement with the Department of War" statement: "Two of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems. The DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement." Corroborated by multiple outlets (Business & Human Rights Centre, TechPolicy.Press, DCD). The text is OpenAI's institutional position attributed to CEO Sam Altman, which is a reasonable convention for the company's leader. The vote "for" on statement 406 ("Ban governments from using AI to conduct mass surveillance of citizens") aligns: the quote states a prohibition on domestic mass surveillance was written into the agreement. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-8 · 5mo ago
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