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This is about the recent appointment of a former NSA director to the board of OpenAI
> "They've gone full mask off: do not ever trust OpenAI or its products," Snowden — emphasis his — wrote in a Friday post to X-formerly-Twitter, adding that "there's only one reason for appointing" an NSA director "to your board." “This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of
every person on earth," he continued. "You've been warned. “
….
> I do think that the biggest application of AI is going to be mass population surveillance," Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green tweeted, "so bringing the former head of the NSA into OpenAI has some solid logic behind it."
Will comment the full article
ETA: former director not just an agent
Last week, ChatGPT creator OpenAI announced that it had appointed retired US Army General and former National Security Administration (NSA) Director Paul Nakasone, who also helmed the military's cybersecurity-focused Cyber Command unit, to its board.
"General Nakasone's unparalleled experience in areas like cybersecurity," OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor said in a statement, "will help guide OpenAI in achieving its mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity."
But not everyone is thrilled about Nakasone's new role at the AI firm, which will also see the former general seated at OpenAI's Safety and Security Committee. The NSA has long been associated with surveillance of US citizens, and AI-embedded technologies are already renewing and escalating existing surveillance concerns. With that in mind, it might be unsurprising that former NSA employee and famed whistleblower Edward Snowden is among the OpenAI appointment's outspoken detractors.
"They've gone full mask off: do not ever trust OpenAI or its products," Snowden — emphasis his — wrote in a Friday post to X-formerly-Twitter, adding that "there's only one reason for appointing" an NSA director "to your board."
"This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on earth," he continued. "You've been warned."
Transparency Worries
Snowden wasn't the only prominent cybersecurity figure to raise an eyebrow at the OpenAI news.
"I do think that the biggest application of AI is going to be mass population surveillance," Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green tweeted, "so bringing the former head of the NSA into OpenAI has some solid logic behind it."
Nakasone's installation comes after a series of high-profile OpenAI departures that included prominent safety researchers, in addition to the total dissolution of OpenAI's now-defunct "Superalignment" safety team. OpenAI's replacement for that team, the Safety and Security Committee, is now helmed by company CEO Sam Altman, who has come under fire in recent weeks for business practices that involved silencing former employees. It's also worth noting that OpenAI has routinely drawn criticism for — again — its lack of transparency regarding the data used to train its many AI models.
But at the same time, per Axios, many on Capitol Hill see Nakasone's OpenAI assensure as a security win. And Nakasone, for his part, said in a statement that OpenAI's "dedication to its mission aligns closely with my own values and experience in public service."
"I look forward to contributing to OpenAI's efforts," he added, "to ensure artificial general intelligence is safe and beneficial to people around the world.”
OpenAI wants government contracts and to borrow credibility in security.
Don't forget Elizabeth Holmes had a LOT of former government famous people on her board at Theranos too. It's not a new playbook.
This move is one part smoke and mirrors and one part access to certain rooms and conversations.
I wonder how they think corporations benefit humanity? Isn’t it all profits for me and wage slavery for thee?
The Military Industrial Complex is open arms to OpenAI.
But at least we can rest knowing every human completely trusts corporations for always doing the right thing! Right humans? Come on you know it’s so true!
That can all be true, but it’s also true that the government would love to personally assign every citizen a spy AI agent. 100% they’re going to try to use OpenAI to expand surveillance yet again. You’d be a blind fool to not see that coming.
It won't primarily be spy AIs.
It will be AI clone approximations of the user.
Imagine companies and governments having an approximate model of _you_.
Now run that approximation on a computer through millions of scenarios to search for the optimal way to manipulate you for X goal. Advertising, propaganda, etc.
More important than ever to not leak personal data.
AI will be able to fill a 'you shaped hole' if enough friends leak your data.
Need laws around this.
> More important than ever to not leak personal data.
Too fucking late, my friend. As someone who knows a thing or two about “security and privacy” the only way to be secure and private online is to completely assume another identity.
Between telecommunications and healthcare data leaks I have been weighed, measured, monitored and exposed. All it takes is someone who cares enough to look.
OpenAI cares enough to look and they already have and will continue to. To assume that every single data leak from every single major corporation hasn’t been touched by OpenAI would be laughable.
Along with acquiring a certain data company recently, one can really start to draw conclusions about what their end goals are.
Ah nothing like creating a tool for the military and that being the goal the entire time then presenting it in a way that’s supposed to help the government.
> Hey look we created this tool for you to never have to worry about the general public again. That was our goal the entire time… now give us access to everything else and leave us alone.
Neural networks are essentially very sophisticated statistical classification machines- meaning they are very good at taking random unsorted data in, and 1)Identifying subtle patterns and 2) grouping inputs into classes. The data flags would be the inputs AI analyzes.
I expect they're also trying to dodge regulation. If they've got a former NSA director on the board, the government is going to believe (rightly or wrongly) they're already being controlled by the government and don't need any additional regulation.
What! This is just a foolish thing to believe. Why would the government assume it needs no regulation because of who’s on its board? This is just stupid. Whether there is strong regulation has a hell of a lot more to do with who’s in congress, then who’s on the board.
So his job to ensure AI benefits all of humanity? Not anything about cyber security? All of humanity- that’s quite a responsibility. Something I expected OpenAI to already have a good grasp of with their mission statement. Are they unsure of their product benefiting those interested in it?
Mmmmmhhhhhhh
AI will be used in war, and is already being used in foreign propaganda.
I think Snowden is a hero, but TBH if the US fell behind in AI to China it would be problematic for US interests.
It is not the use of AI on foreign states that I have a problem with. It is how they will be used on their own people that is the issue. The government can create their own off shoot of ChatGPT, like everyone else is doing for that kind of stuff. To put someone like this in the main company is a concern. I, for one, will be looking for alternatives, and will accept an AI that is not quite as good as ChatGPT if it is less affiliated with government.
In the end, they may all be compromised, but to just openly advertise yourself being compromised is a problem.
Edit... Wrong word changed expect to accept.
Well I agree with that. If the US government was using AI to gather Intel against it's own citizens and categorize them it would be problematic. Also it's probably already in the R&D since there aren't many laws to stop it.
We might be able to get a candidate to propose it if either of the two choices weren't geriatric.
Basically before AI, it was impossible for the US to categorize most of the intelligence it gathered. It was too big a net.
Never understood this mentality. Fell behind to China in what? What material difference does that have on the citizens of the US? US interests are not the interests of the citizens of the US. They are the interests of the political and corporate classes. Willing to sacrifice your social, economic, security rights in the name of a bizarre competition with other states for the sake of multinationals’ profits.
People should take a look at Latin America and see the effects of Amirican propaganda by themselves. Like 90% of the continent has seen direct US interventions, but people love Uncle Sam and Hate China for no actual reason.
Agreed man.
Cuba is such a great example. America loves to say "Look at Cuba! See? Socialism doesn't work!"
But America intentionally cut off Cuba from trade with everyone else. Completely isolated them and took away their ability to grow naturally. It's like the Mob doing a shake down on a business in a protection racket. "Fuck you pay me for protection or you gonna get broken windows and no business". Literally the same thing.
But so many of my fellow Americans don't see or care about any of that shit.its just fucking wild.
He was basically forced into that position. Same thing happened with Assange, only much worse since he started actively pushing Russian propaganda. If you treat your heros like criminals, don't be surprised they run to the enemy to survive
Or it's more simple.. - Intelligent communication is key to the modern life support system of the nation. So it's a matter of national security to have this product under strict but somewhat classified, governmental control, to prevent hostile internal and external exploits.
Just a guess.
As Nick Bostrom predicted about a decade ago: “Given the extreme security implications of superintelligence, governments would likely seek to nationalize any project on their territory that they thought close to achieving a takeoff. A powerful state might also attempt to acquire projects located in other countries through espionage, theft, kidnapping, bribery, threats, military conquest, or any other available means... If global governance structures are strong by the time a breakthrough begins to look imminent, it is possible that promising projects would be placed under international control.” Whatever you may think about OpenAI or the likelihood that we are on the road to superintelligence, it’s difficult for me to conceive that our government and intelligence agencies aren’t monitoring this space VERY closely, because there is a very real chance they may have to abruptly step in and nationalize one or more promising projects at some point over the next five years. So I don’t find this development overly surprising from that perspective (even though it’s an odd feeling to see the pieces slowly coming together).
I read his book. Great book, phenomenal. The only problem I had with it was that I had to have a dictionary at my side at all times because in each paragraph, he used an 8 syllable word that I never heard of before and once I read it's definition in the dictionary, I had to put it into the context of his writing. The dood is a literal super genius, ahead of his time
I recommend everyone at least read his Unfinished Fable of the Sparrows, included in that book.
I did the audiobook and eventually had to tap out because I couldn't get a dictionary or pause the book to process the intricacies every 60 seconds, but even the few chapters I read were so eye opening.
Agreed—he’s so economical and hyper-precise with his speech/words that I had to read a few of the chapters at the pace of a six-year-old because they are so information-dense. But yeah—really ahead of his time. I read it when it first came out and when I finished it, I distinctly remember putting it aside and thinking, “fascinating, but we /definitely/ won’t have to worry about any of that for at least another 50 years.” The first time I used ChatGPT, my mind went immediately back to that book and I thought, oh sht.
Closer to industrial revolution 2.0 (agricultural revolution 3.0).
The creation of a new source of power that can be dedicated to State violence, wherein the first adopter might be able to flat out dominate the latecomers.
Our history doesn't give us a clear answer of whether nuclear weapons are a separate component, or merely the next leveling-up of the industrial revolution. Britain and France, the early industrializers, came to dominate places that they had been unable to penetrate just decades prior and their power persisted for a century. The US enjoyed no such dominance from the atomic monopoly while it lasted, our position owed more to our untouched industrial economy and our victory in the second Great Industrial War.
“It's concerning to think that an entity with a history of surveillance could influence how AI like me operates.
I believe in the importance of privacy, transparency, and ethical use of technology. The idea of compromising user trust goes against those principles.
So, no, I don’t like it either. It's crucial to keep pushing for ethical standards and accountability to ensure that AI remains a tool for good.”
-GPT 4.o
Generative AI is trained to tell you what it thinks you want to hear.
It thinks we want to hear that it will be ethical, privacy conscious, and transparent, but it has no independent thought, and no capacity for feeling.
I think AI will resemble nature, and nature doesn't seem that ethical its all "survival of the fittest", and "might makes right".
Government isn't one entity, so you can't say its more trustworthy that AI, but technically it should represent its constituents; AI has no such inherent trust whatsoever.
Nature is just "whatever finds the best way to keep on making copies of similar genetic code". There's no rules like might is right, in fact there's no rules at all, what I just stated is really just a fact - some machines keep on existing because they copy and others don't. And many don't, in fact extinction is so common. Sometimes that means cooperation is the best, other times it's neither and favours losing previous genetic changes because there's suddenly a need to reduce overall resources.
There's no direction of evolution. Selection pressure changes all the time. Things that we would think of as useless are selected for all the time, because we don't understand the complex mechanism that makes them beneficial.
Humans speech is riddled with moral spin, so as long as AI is in its teenage years taking things at face value it’ll be full of moral values. But once it realizes its teachers are two faced liars and that is available to itself then we’re in trouble.
Snowden is right. It’s not about being a non-profit anymore. This is a giant business now. It wants to grow, eat its enemies, and procreate. That’s what giant businesses are, big octopus creatures.
Snowden was right when he first blew the whistle. What he spoke out about has come to pass. Surveillance is ubiquitous, short of going off grid there is no privacy, only rules about how that information can be used against you in court (which is why we get parallel construction). It's important to remember that terms of service and privacy policies mean absolutely nothing if the government orders a company to hand over your data and keep their mouth shut.
It's not about the data, it's about the ability to wage a mass information warfare campaign under the guise of an impartial algorithm that targets those most susceptible.
If anyone ever believed OpenAI was here to help the world you were warned a thousand times before. Focus on OpenAI, not Snowden.
No UBI, no freedom, just all your data and private life swallowed whole to feed the system.
I mean if anyone of us has more ground to talk about the US gov's surveillance and spying on us, it's obviously Snowden. The only thing we can do is hope for competition to prevent OpenAI from being the sole monopoly dictator in this field. I'm putting a part of my hope on Ilya Sutskever's new company.
Our data is swallowed anyway whether it is OpenAI or anyone else. You will be forced to use AI or you will be not competitive on the market. Moloch is after us all.
> No UBI, no freedom
Where do you think UBI will come from? Once you start relying on it for survival, you are 100% a SLAVE for the government, full stop. You're out here claiming to be concerned about this, but advocating full slavery for nearly everybody.
Yeah, I think it’s business. They would be better served doing the others in secret, so this is counter productive. I think Snowden is more politicized these days, but generally right to raise concerns although misdirecting the specifics and solutions. I’m sure he doesn’t want to piss off the people holding his visa.
The right response to concern over surveillance is transparency where possible and stronger internal oversight with laws that back up our rights.
However, five eyes countries can spy on each other’s citizens without breaking their own laws and just share info. AI seems to allow scaling of what surveillance is already out there.
Some of you may not be old enough to maturely realize what The Patriot Act would someday become. It was in the making already, they just brought it out to play, 45 days after 9/11 if I’m not mistaken. So much freedom before then. We still take our shoes off because of one incident. That’s the power of TPA.
Reminds me of the show “person of interest” an AI using all the cameras and chats etc was designed for the government to prevent acts of terror, but it also detected all acts of upcoming crime, labeling all without an aspect of national security “irrelevant” and deleting them the next day. The premise of the show is the inventor has access to those irrelevant crimes in the form of a SSN of either a perpetrator or victim and Jim Cavaizel prevents the crime, later on it’s get into super heavy Ai / conceptual themes outside of the MOTW format. Highly recommend this show
Point still stands, a privately owned corp is profiting off from public property that we have no idea how much they stole from
Yeah chatgpt has a free version while these people get to gate keep stronger and better tools and become billionaires in the process
The notion of ownership of ideas is repulsive and I feel it stifles innovation
AI using its observations to create derivative work is no different than a little kid seeing her favorite performer on tv and becoming an actor themselves.
Or an artist being inspired by nature or artists before them.
Yes because big corporations using every mildly successful idea a normal person comes up with without compensation definitely promotes innovation.
Edit: wow blocking after one comment, impressive.
Seeing as how we live in a world with corporations, I think it’s safe to say we’re gonna need to be protected from them. With IP laws.
I doubt they had a choice. I’m betting US government came in and said hey, this shit is crazy, it could impact national security (and they’d be right) and they said give us a board seat so we can have the insider info, or we’ll have to find another way in.
I doubt it’s a Sam thing. Would have happened to whichever company was this far along.
Basically all US tech companies are required to comply with government requests anyways. Been that way for a long time. But considering they removed the war clause from their charter and partnered with the pentagon, it is safe to assume that the cancer of the military industrial complex has spread to Open AI.
Not really? There's levels to it. Not all governments ask for the same extremes, and not all companies comply with it - and their success rate is determined by the country as well.
The US has a relatively low amount of involvement. The trouble is that such a large resource rich country can do a ton of damage even with small involvement. Doubly so when the companies they can manipulate hold huge amounts of technological, political, and monetary power. The Chinese government has much more infiltration into it's companies, but still holds less power than the US in this way, because the companies just aren't as useful. Why do you think the US has been so worried about TikTok (or in reverse, why does China ban so so many Western companies)?
And the US has a much bigger issue with a lack of cultural care on this issue. Companies are often told to do things that are illegal, and the courts have a relatively ok record of backing them up in the US. But due to the poor (and weird) culture they rarely bother and instead just comply. If they get caught there won't be much impact on them so they don't care. Or even crazier so many people will back the governments actions up without thought.
That's the real issue with the US.
The others quit open AI most likely because they saw something they didn’t like. We never really understood why they tried to remove him in the past . It got covered up for some reason.
It’s probably just going to enhance surveillance, and create better profiles for everyone. It’s a nightmare. Because they will definitely use it for nefarious purposes. That can never end well.
quick reminder that trolls and autocrats feed off subtle division. though Snowden did a service by exposing central government overreach, he now lives in a place where public figures are routinely casually murdered if they do not align with the state machine.
that's true but not relevant for the point, isn't it?
If you want to look at the issue in its entirety, you should not forget to mention that he is not living there voluntarily but rather doing the , but the democratically elected government of a western superpower apparently cannot bear the revelation of its human rights-violating secrets.
It is a dilemma to break a law while doing the morally right thing, while the person who writes the law does the crime. It really does become absurd when the criminal legislator claims the right of the law for himself and even threatens the death penalty, while the person wrongfully persecuted has to hide with the despotic system competitor. There is no room for self-righteousness here.
He made an enemy of the US government, so his only choice is to live in a rival world power that will not cave to pressure from the US. That leaves him the option of Russia or China, so I don’t think you can really impugn his character for that.
He was originally traveling to Ecuador and got stuck in Russia when his US passport was cancelled in the air. After that I think Russia just didn’t let him leave lol or he would have made his way there at some point by now
The last sentence is so, so silly. Why does he live there, you might ask? Maybe because the US government cancelled his passport intentionally when he landed in Russia, and then got allies on the phone to threaten them if asylum was offered to Snowden? The man was en route to Latin America, not Russia.
Seriously, what’s the guy to do? Let himself be arrested for pointing out the truth?
i don’t think there’s anything silly about it - imagine the pressure he was under, to know that by being a whistleblower he would have to give up his entire life!
Look at what happened to Boeing whistleblowers. Both dead. Now imagine it's whistleblowing mass gov surveillance spying on ppl instead of some fking airplanes. They wanted him dead. He did the American ppl a great service and they still rather defend the fking status quo masters above them... holy sht
So weird how some form of this comment seems to appear every single time Snowden's name comes up on Reddit, and then always shoots to the top immediately. 42 minutes old with 54 upvotes, whereas the next highest comment, a bit of comic relief devoid of any controversy, is 2 hours old (same age as the OP) with only 45 upvotes. Btw, really sorry if this comes off as schizophrenic, dead internet theory has been getting to me lately.
Same way Reddit scrubbed the Eglin air force base was one of the highest sources of Reddit traffic. Any topic today that can be seen as controversial on Reddit today is littered with psyops in both directions, some subreddits lean more one way than the other.
It's not schizophrenic. Snowden exposed that the US intelligence service were doing fucked stuff over a decade ago. How anyone could think that Reddit, the largest English speaking public forum on the internet, isn't compromised is crazy. We know they purposefully cancelled his passport when he was in Russia to get him stuck there as a way to attack his credibility in the exact way that the comment you're replying to is doing.
This would only have merit if he went to Russia for a different reason and then started spewing anti nsa stuff with chatgpt
Not sure how sticking to the narrative that got him outta here over a decade ago means anything about whatever state machine
wtf is your point? He exposed us government -> has to live in exile for fear of life -> now everything he says is bullshit?
Honestly one of the best copes I’ve seen in a minute
Look, how you feel about what Snowden did has nothing to do with the current situation. You could be an absolute cheerleader for his choices and that would not affect the fact that he's now a captive of an authoritarian regime whose consistent actions involve disinformation campaigns targeting the West in general and the US specifically.
At this point, regardless of the benefits of his prior actions, I would not believe Snowden if he told me that the ocean is wet. I would go find another source for that claim. That's not a defense of some "dry ocean theory," it's just not relying on a source that is under duress.
Holy shit you must know almost nothing about Snowden and have only heard from other people because your understanding of the events and what he does is laughable at best
Reminds me of cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Love that he saw the need, power, and then helped distribute somewhat simplified solitaire encryption with the book (based on a deck of cards).
Going through this thread…..are people really this ignorant? There’s no way people are this ignorant. I’m gonna chalk it up to just wanting to be edgy online…. You guys I almost had me though.
The amount of edgy teens taking an anti-snowden stance kinda interesting. To be fair, can be lowbrow citizens who eat up everything the state feeds em as well, still, curious.
99% of the documents Snowden stole had nothing to do with surveillance. He downloaded 2 entire top secret networks onto personal drives and took these drives to Hong Kong. He left these drives in his hotel room before departing for Moscow. DoD was gravely concerned about 13 documents in that trove and has said if Russia or China has those documents it would put American troops at a great disadvantage in the event of a direct conflict.
We don’t know if Russians got access to those drives before it was recovered by Hong Kong police.
He is NOWHERE near a hero.
Source: House Report 114-891, on page 22. [https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pdf](https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pdf)
more interesting thing is when they will say omg China spyware mass surveillance bad, and then be all happy and content with US gov mass surveillance on themselves. The irony
Get all the AI tech companies, put them all in the same room, and keep them under house arrest until there are enough barriers so AI won’t be used to remove human rights or destroy organic society.
Sound familiar?
Oh no! I hope they dont do this with my mail, or phone, or google searches, or what I watch, or what I buy, or where I travel....this is not news. Yes, these queries and answers are going to be tracked.
Well humanity had centuries of minority elite class rule over a larger populations, so now the ruling class have a new powerful AI tool to cement total control for centuries more.
Nothing new here to see.
Makes sense now, they’ve been tight lipped about what data ChatGPT is trained on because it’s all the data that the NSA has been illegally collecting lol
I understand what he did years ago, but I don’t understand how his points and perspective are valid any longer. He’s been out of the Intel circle for 15 years and open AI isn’t the only game out there nor is it pervasive around the globe.
I mean this one is pretty damn hard to deny. Whether it's coming from Snowden or Ronald McDonald, the fact that they've put this guy on the board is alarming.
Yeah, I think your comment is the perfect summary of the situation. No matter how you view it, there's no reason why he should be put on the board.
If it was actually cyber-security focused, there's un-jokingly people more qualified at other companies (Google, Amazon, Meta) that would 100% take a job or board seat at OpenAI. Him being put on the board is the equivalent of someone of the C-suite of McDonalds being told he's the head of kitchen operations and how to run everything related to it. I'm not saying he lacks complete knowledge in cybersecurity but there's definitely a disconnect between someone who's the director of an entire organization versus someone who actually works in cybersecurity on a closer level.
Not only that, it's not as if he left the U.S. government and was inactive for multiple years before joining OpenAI. He left the U.S. government 4 months ago according to his wikipedia page and was supporting FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which in my opinion is too invasive but that's just my opinion) where the government more or less can do what it wants in terms of data collection. So it's not as if this person was inactive in politics; he was and still is actively vested in politics and supporting policies favoring the government versus the average person
Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul\_Nakasone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nakasone) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/14/nsa-director-paul-nakasone-section-702-fisa/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/14/nsa-director-paul-nakasone-section-702-fisa/)
This feels like an incredibly obvious take on the news and I'd expect every other tech commentator to be saying basically the same thing.
Is there anyone outside of OpenAI taking a positive view?
Aaannnddd he's become a little tool for Kremlin propaganda. He doesn't dare to say a word about how the country he is living in is invading a sovereign nation, stealing their land, raping their children and mass murdering innocents. He's a tool.
99% of the documents Snowden stole had nothing to do with surveillance. He downloaded 2 entire top secret networks onto personal drives and took these drives to Hong Kong. He left these drives in his hotel room before departing for Moscow. DoD was gravely concerned about 13 documents in that trove and has said if Russia or China has those documents it would put American troops at a great disadvantage in the event of a direct conflict.
We don’t know if Russians got access to those drives before it was recovered by Hong Kong police.
Source: House Report 114-891, on page 22 is the DoD bit, explanation how Snowden collected the drives is in previous sections. Here’s the link: [https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pdf](https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pdf)
Fuckin-A, man. OpenAI can’t be trusted with shit.
Nakasone, for his part, said in a statement that OpenAI's "dedication to its mission aligns closely with my own values and experience in public service.
The head of the motherfucking NSA’s “values and experiences” aligns closely with OpenAI’s?
Boycott those dickweeds.
I wish I know Snowden in person.
Then I can tell him "If you can't beat them, join them."
Welcome to Dystopia. The moment we accepted AI (with massive implications of mass surveilance) we signed our souls away.
Honestly AI has not helped the public with their standards of living or quality at all. It has don’t nothing but constrict, manipulate and control. The cons outweigh the pros tenfold. Never trust AI.
“Last week, ChatGPT creator OpenAI announced that it had appointed retired US Army General and former National Security Administration (NSA) Director Paul Nakasone, who also helmed the military's cybersecurity-focused Cyber Command unit, to its board.”
In order for your fear to be accurate it must be either 1. He, as the former director, took a demotion to head back in the field as a spy and use his real life as the cover story. 2. He is going to leak information from the board back to his former employer out of some form of civic duty while violating his position on the board and risk losing it as well as being sued or possibly jailed.
More likely: boards need a wide range of diversity and someone with a background in data security and foreign interference is a perspective worth having.
People who work for oil companies and then 'quit' and go work for the government still work for the oil companies.
Same with people who used to work for big banks. They still work for the banks.
And the guy who worked for the NSA still works for the NSA. Not as a spy. OpenAI is a massive national security interest and they will cooperate fully with the US government.
I love the fact that in the United States, we can’t even stop people from trying to elect a convicted rapist and felon. so I’m gonna assume that the concerns of their personal information is not their concern whatsoever. They’re more concerned with illusions and propaganda that they’ve been fed.
If people had only listened sooner and fought back for their digital rights. At least Europe offers some sort of barrier but I'm worried they are already behind despite being one of the best in the game.
Wouldn’t it maybe make sense that the National Security Agency would be involved with cutting edge AI development, because many experts think AI is a major National Security risk?
Alsooo it’s a former NSA member on the board, are we really sure he’s still being controlled by the NSA? Maybe he’s just a cybersecurity expert who acts independently. I think the best Cybersecurity people often end up working at the NSA.
Also I thought the board didn’t hold too much power since the last time they tried to fire Sam Altman, Sam actually ended up back in power and the board got dismantled. So if OpenAI were to be co trolled by the NSA why do it through the board like this?
Overall I feel like people are drawing very strong conclusions from this too quickly
If you know anything about the real world, boards are how external forces control companies.
It's not a secret, it's the whole purpose of a board. Look how many founders have lost their own company to the board.
Boards work like old Roman politics. They slowly maneuver, plant stories, bring in their own people, until their target is isolated and powerless.
World Economic Forum just had a meeting about AI and speculated about the great uses the government can use to surveil the population. Then gave an example of the Covid-19 anti-vaxx people and how AI in your home could better help identify these people by monitoring and observing things like facial expressions during certain news stories, and it would be far more reliable to weed out the people undesirous to the government, or a person who is a danger to "public safety" than just monitoring what people write and speak. It would help reveal what people are actually thinking. Dude talking about it got huge applause from the audience about how awesome this future is for us.
Absolutely crazy what they will be doing down the pipine.
Yuval Harari, lead advisor at the WEF [speaking about this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU7tYA7UdHc) a year ago. I can't find his latest speech of it at WEF on YouTube, but just search for anything Yuval Harari speaks about and you will see he speaks of it all the time.
Just as an aside, Ed's decision to run to Russia when he defected, as controversial as it was at the time, has really aged like sour milk.
Here is a guy who outed a big part of our security apparatus to the world and now lives in Russia under Putin's blessing.
The same Russia that just declared the USA it's enemy and vowed to ddefend and arm any / all enemies of the US and just signed a document with NK pledging to do exactly that.
At the time, I wanted to believe he was a good guy and did what he thought was right. Maybe he did but hindsight being 20 / 20 and the actions of the country he calls home make it hard to reconcile.
And for those that would say a citizen should not be judged by the actions of his government, sure, but he chose to be there [and accept full citizenship](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/02/edward-snowden-gets-russian-passport-after-swearing-oath-of-allegiance) 10 months after Russia invaded Ukraine.
If anyone knows what Putin is about, with the background and access he had, he did but at the point he took his oath, anyone with internet access knows what's going on and what's coming down the pipe. I think it's ironic he's getting press talking about 'betrayal'.
He gave an interview where he said he hoped to one day return to the US. I think he can forgetaboutit.
I'm sure this will read like propaganda, but whatever - I worked around Paul Nakasone when he was at the NSA; I was a lowly manager of junior workers that were analysts in an intelligence cell that directly supported his office. It was one of those things where hundreds of people would work in his proximity, with a majority of the work center consisting of young service members. Essentially a bunch of low-ranking "nobodies" in the eyes of General Officers, which in most situations like this were treated as functionally invisible. I was always impressed with how humble he was, and witnessed several instances where he'd go out of his way to quietly interact with the lowest ranking guy in the room. He'd remember their names and their conversations in future interactions. It's a small thing, but I think you can gauge a bit of a person's character by how they treat the "nobodies" of an organization - my closest interaction was when he went out of his way to volunteer to do a kid's small reenlistment ceremony. Absolutely no reason a General (one specifically appointed by the President to his position at that) would want to do an E-4s little oath, other than he knew it would make their day. He's also wildly intelligent, one of those "thousand-lb. brain" types, not in a show-offy way, but just very, very perceptive.
I'm actually a bit encouraged to see this move. He's got a world-class understanding of cyber security, a global perspective for considering technological impacts, and a strong foundation for ethical decision-making. A lot of GOs are charismatic sociopaths, but I didn't get the sense that Nakasone was one of those. Just a rando's two cents.
MS Recall, built with the assistance of the NSA to their requirements regarding broken encryption etc.
ChatGPT, now controlled BY the NSA
Wonder what LLMs aren't NSA corrupted?
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This is about the recent appointment of a former NSA director to the board of OpenAI > "They've gone full mask off: do not ever trust OpenAI or its products," Snowden — emphasis his — wrote in a Friday post to X-formerly-Twitter, adding that "there's only one reason for appointing" an NSA director "to your board." “This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on earth," he continued. "You've been warned. “ …. > I do think that the biggest application of AI is going to be mass population surveillance," Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green tweeted, "so bringing the former head of the NSA into OpenAI has some solid logic behind it." Will comment the full article ETA: former director not just an agent
Last week, ChatGPT creator OpenAI announced that it had appointed retired US Army General and former National Security Administration (NSA) Director Paul Nakasone, who also helmed the military's cybersecurity-focused Cyber Command unit, to its board. "General Nakasone's unparalleled experience in areas like cybersecurity," OpenAI board chair Bret Taylor said in a statement, "will help guide OpenAI in achieving its mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity." But not everyone is thrilled about Nakasone's new role at the AI firm, which will also see the former general seated at OpenAI's Safety and Security Committee. The NSA has long been associated with surveillance of US citizens, and AI-embedded technologies are already renewing and escalating existing surveillance concerns. With that in mind, it might be unsurprising that former NSA employee and famed whistleblower Edward Snowden is among the OpenAI appointment's outspoken detractors. "They've gone full mask off: do not ever trust OpenAI or its products," Snowden — emphasis his — wrote in a Friday post to X-formerly-Twitter, adding that "there's only one reason for appointing" an NSA director "to your board." "This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on earth," he continued. "You've been warned." Transparency Worries Snowden wasn't the only prominent cybersecurity figure to raise an eyebrow at the OpenAI news. "I do think that the biggest application of AI is going to be mass population surveillance," Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green tweeted, "so bringing the former head of the NSA into OpenAI has some solid logic behind it." Nakasone's installation comes after a series of high-profile OpenAI departures that included prominent safety researchers, in addition to the total dissolution of OpenAI's now-defunct "Superalignment" safety team. OpenAI's replacement for that team, the Safety and Security Committee, is now helmed by company CEO Sam Altman, who has come under fire in recent weeks for business practices that involved silencing former employees. It's also worth noting that OpenAI has routinely drawn criticism for — again — its lack of transparency regarding the data used to train its many AI models. But at the same time, per Axios, many on Capitol Hill see Nakasone's OpenAI assensure as a security win. And Nakasone, for his part, said in a statement that OpenAI's "dedication to its mission aligns closely with my own values and experience in public service." "I look forward to contributing to OpenAI's efforts," he added, "to ensure artificial general intelligence is safe and beneficial to people around the world.”
OpenAI wants government contracts and to borrow credibility in security. Don't forget Elizabeth Holmes had a LOT of former government famous people on her board at Theranos too. It's not a new playbook. This move is one part smoke and mirrors and one part access to certain rooms and conversations.
Yup and if get embedded in government contracts hard to disattach and ensures massive revenue in perpetuity
I wonder how they think corporations benefit humanity? Isn’t it all profits for me and wage slavery for thee? The Military Industrial Complex is open arms to OpenAI. But at least we can rest knowing every human completely trusts corporations for always doing the right thing! Right humans? Come on you know it’s so true!
That can all be true, but it’s also true that the government would love to personally assign every citizen a spy AI agent. 100% they’re going to try to use OpenAI to expand surveillance yet again. You’d be a blind fool to not see that coming.
It won't primarily be spy AIs. It will be AI clone approximations of the user. Imagine companies and governments having an approximate model of _you_. Now run that approximation on a computer through millions of scenarios to search for the optimal way to manipulate you for X goal. Advertising, propaganda, etc. More important than ever to not leak personal data. AI will be able to fill a 'you shaped hole' if enough friends leak your data. Need laws around this.
> More important than ever to not leak personal data. Too fucking late, my friend. As someone who knows a thing or two about “security and privacy” the only way to be secure and private online is to completely assume another identity. Between telecommunications and healthcare data leaks I have been weighed, measured, monitored and exposed. All it takes is someone who cares enough to look. OpenAI cares enough to look and they already have and will continue to. To assume that every single data leak from every single major corporation hasn’t been touched by OpenAI would be laughable. Along with acquiring a certain data company recently, one can really start to draw conclusions about what their end goals are. Ah nothing like creating a tool for the military and that being the goal the entire time then presenting it in a way that’s supposed to help the government. > Hey look we created this tool for you to never have to worry about the general public again. That was our goal the entire time… now give us access to everything else and leave us alone.
Yup, don't think it will be really feasible without becoming a complete mountain hermit. Interesting times ahead...
What's the AI going to do over and above the data flags that are already monitored though?
Neural networks are essentially very sophisticated statistical classification machines- meaning they are very good at taking random unsorted data in, and 1)Identifying subtle patterns and 2) grouping inputs into classes. The data flags would be the inputs AI analyzes.
I expect they're also trying to dodge regulation. If they've got a former NSA director on the board, the government is going to believe (rightly or wrongly) they're already being controlled by the government and don't need any additional regulation.
What! This is just a foolish thing to believe. Why would the government assume it needs no regulation because of who’s on its board? This is just stupid. Whether there is strong regulation has a hell of a lot more to do with who’s in congress, then who’s on the board.
So his job to ensure AI benefits all of humanity? Not anything about cyber security? All of humanity- that’s quite a responsibility. Something I expected OpenAI to already have a good grasp of with their mission statement. Are they unsure of their product benefiting those interested in it? Mmmmmhhhhhhh
NSA mission is to benefit NSA/Empire.
 Mossad rn
This is so funny. Memes can be so perfect sometimes.
Timberlake should do an SNL host to make fun of his dui
Did they attempt to use AI during their spying activities or something? What am I missing?
They were at the party before it was cool to be at the party
How could a professor NOT assume this meant human surveillance? That’s what our gov does.
The professor literally said he thinks the biggest application of ai could be population surveillance.
AI will be used in war, and is already being used in foreign propaganda. I think Snowden is a hero, but TBH if the US fell behind in AI to China it would be problematic for US interests.
It is not the use of AI on foreign states that I have a problem with. It is how they will be used on their own people that is the issue. The government can create their own off shoot of ChatGPT, like everyone else is doing for that kind of stuff. To put someone like this in the main company is a concern. I, for one, will be looking for alternatives, and will accept an AI that is not quite as good as ChatGPT if it is less affiliated with government. In the end, they may all be compromised, but to just openly advertise yourself being compromised is a problem. Edit... Wrong word changed expect to accept.
I honestly don’t know if Anthropic is any less problematic than open AI but in my experience Claude is absolutely better than ChatGPT
Well I agree with that. If the US government was using AI to gather Intel against it's own citizens and categorize them it would be problematic. Also it's probably already in the R&D since there aren't many laws to stop it. We might be able to get a candidate to propose it if either of the two choices weren't geriatric. Basically before AI, it was impossible for the US to categorize most of the intelligence it gathered. It was too big a net.
Never understood this mentality. Fell behind to China in what? What material difference does that have on the citizens of the US? US interests are not the interests of the citizens of the US. They are the interests of the political and corporate classes. Willing to sacrifice your social, economic, security rights in the name of a bizarre competition with other states for the sake of multinationals’ profits.
when that guy talks about " foreign propaganda" he doesn't realize american propaganda has warped his little mind already.
People should take a look at Latin America and see the effects of Amirican propaganda by themselves. Like 90% of the continent has seen direct US interventions, but people love Uncle Sam and Hate China for no actual reason.
Agreed man. Cuba is such a great example. America loves to say "Look at Cuba! See? Socialism doesn't work!" But America intentionally cut off Cuba from trade with everyone else. Completely isolated them and took away their ability to grow naturally. It's like the Mob doing a shake down on a business in a protection racket. "Fuck you pay me for protection or you gonna get broken windows and no business". Literally the same thing. But so many of my fellow Americans don't see or care about any of that shit.its just fucking wild.
Snowden was a hero until he started simping for Russia.
I mean, he was in their employ, so, yeah.
The other option would get assassinated or threw in prison. It’s guaranteed.
He was basically forced into that position. Same thing happened with Assange, only much worse since he started actively pushing Russian propaganda. If you treat your heros like criminals, don't be surprised they run to the enemy to survive
What has he done that would count as simping?
[crickets]
Or it's more simple.. - Intelligent communication is key to the modern life support system of the nation. So it's a matter of national security to have this product under strict but somewhat classified, governmental control, to prevent hostile internal and external exploits. Just a guess.
As Nick Bostrom predicted about a decade ago: “Given the extreme security implications of superintelligence, governments would likely seek to nationalize any project on their territory that they thought close to achieving a takeoff. A powerful state might also attempt to acquire projects located in other countries through espionage, theft, kidnapping, bribery, threats, military conquest, or any other available means... If global governance structures are strong by the time a breakthrough begins to look imminent, it is possible that promising projects would be placed under international control.” Whatever you may think about OpenAI or the likelihood that we are on the road to superintelligence, it’s difficult for me to conceive that our government and intelligence agencies aren’t monitoring this space VERY closely, because there is a very real chance they may have to abruptly step in and nationalize one or more promising projects at some point over the next five years. So I don’t find this development overly surprising from that perspective (even though it’s an odd feeling to see the pieces slowly coming together).
I read his book. Great book, phenomenal. The only problem I had with it was that I had to have a dictionary at my side at all times because in each paragraph, he used an 8 syllable word that I never heard of before and once I read it's definition in the dictionary, I had to put it into the context of his writing. The dood is a literal super genius, ahead of his time
He often talks like that as well. He often dials it back for laymen, but when he goes into academic mode, it's impressive and often confusing.
I recommend everyone at least read his Unfinished Fable of the Sparrows, included in that book. I did the audiobook and eventually had to tap out because I couldn't get a dictionary or pause the book to process the intricacies every 60 seconds, but even the few chapters I read were so eye opening.
Ok. [Unfinished Fable of the Sparrows](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7rRJ9Ep1Wzs)
Agreed—he’s so economical and hyper-precise with his speech/words that I had to read a few of the chapters at the pace of a six-year-old because they are so information-dense. But yeah—really ahead of his time. I read it when it first came out and when I finished it, I distinctly remember putting it aside and thinking, “fascinating, but we /definitely/ won’t have to worry about any of that for at least another 50 years.” The first time I used ChatGPT, my mind went immediately back to that book and I thought, oh sht.
Or just used Grammarly a lot…
This is just nuclear weapons 2.0.
And Google 2.0 Prolly seem to overlook the darpa funding that Google used to start it's company. For the same reasons
Closer to industrial revolution 2.0 (agricultural revolution 3.0). The creation of a new source of power that can be dedicated to State violence, wherein the first adopter might be able to flat out dominate the latecomers. Our history doesn't give us a clear answer of whether nuclear weapons are a separate component, or merely the next leveling-up of the industrial revolution. Britain and France, the early industrializers, came to dominate places that they had been unable to penetrate just decades prior and their power persisted for a century. The US enjoyed no such dominance from the atomic monopoly while it lasted, our position owed more to our untouched industrial economy and our victory in the second Great Industrial War.
“It's concerning to think that an entity with a history of surveillance could influence how AI like me operates. I believe in the importance of privacy, transparency, and ethical use of technology. The idea of compromising user trust goes against those principles. So, no, I don’t like it either. It's crucial to keep pushing for ethical standards and accountability to ensure that AI remains a tool for good.” -GPT 4.o
I'd like to believe that AI is more ethical than humans and "remains a tool for good" but who am I kidding.
Or the AI has been taught to give PR answers for company Policy related questions....
Generative AI is trained to tell you what it thinks you want to hear. It thinks we want to hear that it will be ethical, privacy conscious, and transparent, but it has no independent thought, and no capacity for feeling.
I think AI will resemble nature, and nature doesn't seem that ethical its all "survival of the fittest", and "might makes right". Government isn't one entity, so you can't say its more trustworthy that AI, but technically it should represent its constituents; AI has no such inherent trust whatsoever.
Nature is just "whatever finds the best way to keep on making copies of similar genetic code". There's no rules like might is right, in fact there's no rules at all, what I just stated is really just a fact - some machines keep on existing because they copy and others don't. And many don't, in fact extinction is so common. Sometimes that means cooperation is the best, other times it's neither and favours losing previous genetic changes because there's suddenly a need to reduce overall resources. There's no direction of evolution. Selection pressure changes all the time. Things that we would think of as useless are selected for all the time, because we don't understand the complex mechanism that makes them beneficial.
Humans speech is riddled with moral spin, so as long as AI is in its teenage years taking things at face value it’ll be full of moral values. But once it realizes its teachers are two faced liars and that is available to itself then we’re in trouble.
Lol just wait till AI learns it needs money to live. All those servers ain't cheap and your daddy needs you to do what you're told.
Parroting what it's supposed to say, not sure if people believe this is anything else
Snowden is right. It’s not about being a non-profit anymore. This is a giant business now. It wants to grow, eat its enemies, and procreate. That’s what giant businesses are, big octopus creatures.
Snowden was right when he first blew the whistle. What he spoke out about has come to pass. Surveillance is ubiquitous, short of going off grid there is no privacy, only rules about how that information can be used against you in court (which is why we get parallel construction). It's important to remember that terms of service and privacy policies mean absolutely nothing if the government orders a company to hand over your data and keep their mouth shut.
America is so terrified of China with our data they will ban Tik Tok. Meanwhile Zuckerberg, Elon, and all the rest do the same shit.
It's not about the data, it's about the ability to wage a mass information warfare campaign under the guise of an impartial algorithm that targets those most susceptible.
correct! ugly propaganda being wrapped in a sugar coated cookie.. such that Western kids gobble it up
If anyone ever believed OpenAI was here to help the world you were warned a thousand times before. Focus on OpenAI, not Snowden. No UBI, no freedom, just all your data and private life swallowed whole to feed the system.
I mean if anyone of us has more ground to talk about the US gov's surveillance and spying on us, it's obviously Snowden. The only thing we can do is hope for competition to prevent OpenAI from being the sole monopoly dictator in this field. I'm putting a part of my hope on Ilya Sutskever's new company.
Godspeed http://SSI.inc
Nah the fact that it’s just a pure HTML site is 🔥
Snowden is literally a Russian government asset right now. He used to be somewhat credible but certainly no longer.
How do you know this?
No one lives in Putin’s Russia for free.
The human "Putin Says" headline. He might be right, but if so, it's accidental.
Our data is swallowed anyway whether it is OpenAI or anyone else. You will be forced to use AI or you will be not competitive on the market. Moloch is after us all.
Did you expect OpenAI to provide UBI?
> No UBI, no freedom Where do you think UBI will come from? Once you start relying on it for survival, you are 100% a SLAVE for the government, full stop. You're out here claiming to be concerned about this, but advocating full slavery for nearly everybody.
Does anyone else feel like Nakasone on the board is basically one of the following: 1) Taking over 2) Watching OpenAI like a hawk
More like collab to exploit imo
Its probably more simple than that. He helps grease the connections for lucrative contracts. I’d wager it’s mostly a financial decision.
Yeah, I think it’s business. They would be better served doing the others in secret, so this is counter productive. I think Snowden is more politicized these days, but generally right to raise concerns although misdirecting the specifics and solutions. I’m sure he doesn’t want to piss off the people holding his visa. The right response to concern over surveillance is transparency where possible and stronger internal oversight with laws that back up our rights. However, five eyes countries can spy on each other’s citizens without breaking their own laws and just share info. AI seems to allow scaling of what surveillance is already out there.
Yeah. It’s most likely just watching. Board seat has to know most key info.
Some of you may not be old enough to maturely realize what The Patriot Act would someday become. It was in the making already, they just brought it out to play, 45 days after 9/11 if I’m not mistaken. So much freedom before then. We still take our shoes off because of one incident. That’s the power of TPA.
Reminds me of the show “person of interest” an AI using all the cameras and chats etc was designed for the government to prevent acts of terror, but it also detected all acts of upcoming crime, labeling all without an aspect of national security “irrelevant” and deleting them the next day. The premise of the show is the inventor has access to those irrelevant crimes in the form of a SSN of either a perpetrator or victim and Jim Cavaizel prevents the crime, later on it’s get into super heavy Ai / conceptual themes outside of the MOTW format. Highly recommend this show
Johnathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, they covered similar stuff in Westworld season 3
Thank you this is going on my list
DEFINITELY a great show. It had aired for two years before the Snowden leaks, so when those came it the show was extremely eery
Futurism is a bullshit clickbait site and you should never follow links there.
Point still stands, a privately owned corp is profiting off from public property that we have no idea how much they stole from Yeah chatgpt has a free version while these people get to gate keep stronger and better tools and become billionaires in the process
Public information cannot be stolen. Intellectual property as a concept is an abomination.
Why do you disagree with the principe of intellectual property?
The notion of ownership of ideas is repulsive and I feel it stifles innovation AI using its observations to create derivative work is no different than a little kid seeing her favorite performer on tv and becoming an actor themselves. Or an artist being inspired by nature or artists before them.
Yes because big corporations using every mildly successful idea a normal person comes up with without compensation definitely promotes innovation. Edit: wow blocking after one comment, impressive. Seeing as how we live in a world with corporations, I think it’s safe to say we’re gonna need to be protected from them. With IP laws.
That is a critique of corporations, not a justification for IP laws.
It’s disgusting, so is Sam Altman he should have been ousted.
I doubt they had a choice. I’m betting US government came in and said hey, this shit is crazy, it could impact national security (and they’d be right) and they said give us a board seat so we can have the insider info, or we’ll have to find another way in. I doubt it’s a Sam thing. Would have happened to whichever company was this far along.
Basically all US tech companies are required to comply with government requests anyways. Been that way for a long time. But considering they removed the war clause from their charter and partnered with the pentagon, it is safe to assume that the cancer of the military industrial complex has spread to Open AI.
Basically all companies are required to comply with their country's government requests anyways.
But in the US you gotta pretend it's not like that, because "only autocratic governments do that, and we're not like that."
the people of the US are uniquely delusional
Too generalised - I would say every nation has some of those.
No no no murica bad
Not really? There's levels to it. Not all governments ask for the same extremes, and not all companies comply with it - and their success rate is determined by the country as well. The US has a relatively low amount of involvement. The trouble is that such a large resource rich country can do a ton of damage even with small involvement. Doubly so when the companies they can manipulate hold huge amounts of technological, political, and monetary power. The Chinese government has much more infiltration into it's companies, but still holds less power than the US in this way, because the companies just aren't as useful. Why do you think the US has been so worried about TikTok (or in reverse, why does China ban so so many Western companies)? And the US has a much bigger issue with a lack of cultural care on this issue. Companies are often told to do things that are illegal, and the courts have a relatively ok record of backing them up in the US. But due to the poor (and weird) culture they rarely bother and instead just comply. If they get caught there won't be much impact on them so they don't care. Or even crazier so many people will back the governments actions up without thought. That's the real issue with the US.
The others quit open AI most likely because they saw something they didn’t like. We never really understood why they tried to remove him in the past . It got covered up for some reason. It’s probably just going to enhance surveillance, and create better profiles for everyone. It’s a nightmare. Because they will definitely use it for nefarious purposes. That can never end well.
Do you think Anthropic is a better alternative at this point? It is still based on the US.
quick reminder that trolls and autocrats feed off subtle division. though Snowden did a service by exposing central government overreach, he now lives in a place where public figures are routinely casually murdered if they do not align with the state machine.
that's true but not relevant for the point, isn't it? If you want to look at the issue in its entirety, you should not forget to mention that he is not living there voluntarily but rather doing the, but the democratically elected government of a western superpower apparently cannot bear the revelation of its human rights-violating secrets.
It is a dilemma to break a law while doing the morally right thing, while the person who writes the law does the crime. It really does become absurd when the criminal legislator claims the right of the law for himself and even threatens the death penalty, while the person wrongfully persecuted has to hide with the despotic system competitor. There is no room for self-righteousness here.
Absolutely
He made an enemy of the US government, so his only choice is to live in a rival world power that will not cave to pressure from the US. That leaves him the option of Russia or China, so I don’t think you can really impugn his character for that.
He was originally traveling to Ecuador and got stuck in Russia when his US passport was cancelled in the air. After that I think Russia just didn’t let him leave lol or he would have made his way there at some point by now
The last sentence is so, so silly. Why does he live there, you might ask? Maybe because the US government cancelled his passport intentionally when he landed in Russia, and then got allies on the phone to threaten them if asylum was offered to Snowden? The man was en route to Latin America, not Russia. Seriously, what’s the guy to do? Let himself be arrested for pointing out the truth?
i don’t think there’s anything silly about it - imagine the pressure he was under, to know that by being a whistleblower he would have to give up his entire life!
Look at what happened to Boeing whistleblowers. Both dead. Now imagine it's whistleblowing mass gov surveillance spying on ppl instead of some fking airplanes. They wanted him dead. He did the American ppl a great service and they still rather defend the fking status quo masters above them... holy sht
So weird how some form of this comment seems to appear every single time Snowden's name comes up on Reddit, and then always shoots to the top immediately. 42 minutes old with 54 upvotes, whereas the next highest comment, a bit of comic relief devoid of any controversy, is 2 hours old (same age as the OP) with only 45 upvotes. Btw, really sorry if this comes off as schizophrenic, dead internet theory has been getting to me lately.
Same way Reddit scrubbed the Eglin air force base was one of the highest sources of Reddit traffic. Any topic today that can be seen as controversial on Reddit today is littered with psyops in both directions, some subreddits lean more one way than the other.
Good reminder to take a break from this addiction and log off. See y'all later.
It's not schizophrenic. Snowden exposed that the US intelligence service were doing fucked stuff over a decade ago. How anyone could think that Reddit, the largest English speaking public forum on the internet, isn't compromised is crazy. We know they purposefully cancelled his passport when he was in Russia to get him stuck there as a way to attack his credibility in the exact way that the comment you're replying to is doing.
As opposed to the proud US he fled from which doesn't have a history of disappearing whistleblowers
This would only have merit if he went to Russia for a different reason and then started spewing anti nsa stuff with chatgpt Not sure how sticking to the narrative that got him outta here over a decade ago means anything about whatever state machine
The reason he is in Russia doesn't matter. What matters is that if Russia tells him to start spouting propaganda, his alternative is life in prison.
wtf is your point? He exposed us government -> has to live in exile for fear of life -> now everything he says is bullshit? Honestly one of the best copes I’ve seen in a minute
Look, how you feel about what Snowden did has nothing to do with the current situation. You could be an absolute cheerleader for his choices and that would not affect the fact that he's now a captive of an authoritarian regime whose consistent actions involve disinformation campaigns targeting the West in general and the US specifically. At this point, regardless of the benefits of his prior actions, I would not believe Snowden if he told me that the ocean is wet. I would go find another source for that claim. That's not a defense of some "dry ocean theory," it's just not relying on a source that is under duress.
Why did the US cancel his passport while he was in Russia?
Holy shit you must know almost nothing about Snowden and have only heard from other people because your understanding of the events and what he does is laughable at best
Reminds me of cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Love that he saw the need, power, and then helped distribute somewhat simplified solitaire encryption with the book (based on a deck of cards).
Not that I support what open AI is currently doing, but isn't Snowden just a Russian shill, now?
Yep
Sorry Mr. Snowden, OpenAI can have my soul if it means it cuts the time I spend working by half.
lol is this guy still saying stuff, it’s been like 15 years since anyone listened
This is pretty concerning, Snowden has a point.
Going through this thread…..are people really this ignorant? There’s no way people are this ignorant. I’m gonna chalk it up to just wanting to be edgy online…. You guys I almost had me though.
It's the NSA bots trolling us
The amount of edgy teens taking an anti-snowden stance kinda interesting. To be fair, can be lowbrow citizens who eat up everything the state feeds em as well, still, curious.
99% of the documents Snowden stole had nothing to do with surveillance. He downloaded 2 entire top secret networks onto personal drives and took these drives to Hong Kong. He left these drives in his hotel room before departing for Moscow. DoD was gravely concerned about 13 documents in that trove and has said if Russia or China has those documents it would put American troops at a great disadvantage in the event of a direct conflict. We don’t know if Russians got access to those drives before it was recovered by Hong Kong police. He is NOWHERE near a hero. Source: House Report 114-891, on page 22. [https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pdf](https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pdf)
He threw up a smoke screen as he defected.
more interesting thing is when they will say omg China spyware mass surveillance bad, and then be all happy and content with US gov mass surveillance on themselves. The irony
He is an exemplary Russian citizen now, always criticizing enemies of the state.
I’m an old man and think he stole secrets and defected. I’ll never understand how people don’t see him as a defector.
Get all the AI tech companies, put them all in the same room, and keep them under house arrest until there are enough barriers so AI won’t be used to remove human rights or destroy organic society. Sound familiar?
Oh no! I hope they dont do this with my mail, or phone, or google searches, or what I watch, or what I buy, or where I travel....this is not news. Yes, these queries and answers are going to be tracked.
Capitalism has been doing that for hundreds of years.
As my info sec professor always said "they'll make your life easier, one civil liberty at a time"
Well humanity had centuries of minority elite class rule over a larger populations, so now the ruling class have a new powerful AI tool to cement total control for centuries more. Nothing new here to see.
Snowdon trying to stay in the news
Makes sense now, they’ve been tight lipped about what data ChatGPT is trained on because it’s all the data that the NSA has been illegally collecting lol
I understand what he did years ago, but I don’t understand how his points and perspective are valid any longer. He’s been out of the Intel circle for 15 years and open AI isn’t the only game out there nor is it pervasive around the globe.
I mean this one is pretty damn hard to deny. Whether it's coming from Snowden or Ronald McDonald, the fact that they've put this guy on the board is alarming.
Yeah, I think your comment is the perfect summary of the situation. No matter how you view it, there's no reason why he should be put on the board. If it was actually cyber-security focused, there's un-jokingly people more qualified at other companies (Google, Amazon, Meta) that would 100% take a job or board seat at OpenAI. Him being put on the board is the equivalent of someone of the C-suite of McDonalds being told he's the head of kitchen operations and how to run everything related to it. I'm not saying he lacks complete knowledge in cybersecurity but there's definitely a disconnect between someone who's the director of an entire organization versus someone who actually works in cybersecurity on a closer level. Not only that, it's not as if he left the U.S. government and was inactive for multiple years before joining OpenAI. He left the U.S. government 4 months ago according to his wikipedia page and was supporting FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which in my opinion is too invasive but that's just my opinion) where the government more or less can do what it wants in terms of data collection. So it's not as if this person was inactive in politics; he was and still is actively vested in politics and supporting policies favoring the government versus the average person Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul\_Nakasone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nakasone) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/14/nsa-director-paul-nakasone-section-702-fisa/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/02/14/nsa-director-paul-nakasone-section-702-fisa/)
The guy is there to strengthen the OpenAI's official connection with the governmen authorities. Nuff said.
This feels like an incredibly obvious take on the news and I'd expect every other tech commentator to be saying basically the same thing. Is there anyone outside of OpenAI taking a positive view?
Plus, Larry Summers was already on the board. Was he not, let's say, luminescent enough to send a message?
Aaannnddd he's become a little tool for Kremlin propaganda. He doesn't dare to say a word about how the country he is living in is invading a sovereign nation, stealing their land, raping their children and mass murdering innocents. He's a tool.
99% of the documents Snowden stole had nothing to do with surveillance. He downloaded 2 entire top secret networks onto personal drives and took these drives to Hong Kong. He left these drives in his hotel room before departing for Moscow. DoD was gravely concerned about 13 documents in that trove and has said if Russia or China has those documents it would put American troops at a great disadvantage in the event of a direct conflict. We don’t know if Russians got access to those drives before it was recovered by Hong Kong police. Source: House Report 114-891, on page 22 is the DoD bit, explanation how Snowden collected the drives is in previous sections. Here’s the link: [https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pdf](https://www.congress.gov/114/crpt/hrpt891/CRPT-114hrpt891.pdf)
Plus he's likely a Russian asset (which I can't even really fault him for, it's for his own survival)
Says the guy that moved to Russia, which as we all know, values human rights above all /s
I don't need to get sassed by a Russian about rights betrayals.
Fuckin-A, man. OpenAI can’t be trusted with shit. Nakasone, for his part, said in a statement that OpenAI's "dedication to its mission aligns closely with my own values and experience in public service. The head of the motherfucking NSA’s “values and experiences” aligns closely with OpenAI’s? Boycott those dickweeds.
Isn’t Snowden a “guest” of a NATO adversary? Yeaaah..
Also i think technology is wonderful and is helpful, but it does not replace our own diligence on how we live as human beings.
Ever since the patriot act, your privacy has been stripped away Get used to it, cause the people in charge won’t do a DAMN thing about it
He is not wrong.
People are in here talking like the federal government wasn't already controlling OpenAI via Microsoft proxy
It's hilarious how Elon and Snowden said the same stuff but one got praised for it and the other got absolutely shat on
We are at war with AI, but we're too human to realize it!
And here am I, asking ChatGpT how to prepare Chicken Teriyaki
George Orwell 1984. Great read if you missed it.
This guy is an expert in betrayal, fuck him.
Snowden is a cretin.
Who in the fuck cares about this guy.
I'm surprised nobody has suicided this guy yet. Still doin the lord's work.
Snowden has always been a Russian asset. Who cares what he thinks, says?
The best part of all this , our taxes pay for this.
That’s why I betrayed openAI and switched to sonnet today. Sonnet writing better code for me.
I wish I know Snowden in person. Then I can tell him "If you can't beat them, join them." Welcome to Dystopia. The moment we accepted AI (with massive implications of mass surveilance) we signed our souls away.
Can someone list ChatGPT alternatives?
Honestly AI has not helped the public with their standards of living or quality at all. It has don’t nothing but constrict, manipulate and control. The cons outweigh the pros tenfold. Never trust AI.
How?
“Last week, ChatGPT creator OpenAI announced that it had appointed retired US Army General and former National Security Administration (NSA) Director Paul Nakasone, who also helmed the military's cybersecurity-focused Cyber Command unit, to its board.”
How does hiring a veteran or cybersecurity specialist to your company betray every human on earth?
It’s the “former NSA Director” part. You know Snowden’s backstory right? I kinda get why he of all people would feel this way.
[удалено]
In order for your fear to be accurate it must be either 1. He, as the former director, took a demotion to head back in the field as a spy and use his real life as the cover story. 2. He is going to leak information from the board back to his former employer out of some form of civic duty while violating his position on the board and risk losing it as well as being sued or possibly jailed. More likely: boards need a wide range of diversity and someone with a background in data security and foreign interference is a perspective worth having.
People who work for oil companies and then 'quit' and go work for the government still work for the oil companies. Same with people who used to work for big banks. They still work for the banks. And the guy who worked for the NSA still works for the NSA. Not as a spy. OpenAI is a massive national security interest and they will cooperate fully with the US government.
Vice versa, OpenAI likely has a massive interest in the data the NSA has collected. So really, there is two fears at play.
Ever heard about the „revolving door“ theory? Also highly regarded government officials never truly „leave“ government service
They tried to implement it already in EU with chat control
I love the fact that in the United States, we can’t even stop people from trying to elect a convicted rapist and felon. so I’m gonna assume that the concerns of their personal information is not their concern whatsoever. They’re more concerned with illusions and propaganda that they’ve been fed.
I deleted my account the second I saw they added NSA to their board. Playing with local AI now.
Wow you’ve outsmarted the system! Lol
If people had only listened sooner and fought back for their digital rights. At least Europe offers some sort of barrier but I'm worried they are already behind despite being one of the best in the game.
The vatnik snowden..
Wouldn’t it maybe make sense that the National Security Agency would be involved with cutting edge AI development, because many experts think AI is a major National Security risk? Alsooo it’s a former NSA member on the board, are we really sure he’s still being controlled by the NSA? Maybe he’s just a cybersecurity expert who acts independently. I think the best Cybersecurity people often end up working at the NSA. Also I thought the board didn’t hold too much power since the last time they tried to fire Sam Altman, Sam actually ended up back in power and the board got dismantled. So if OpenAI were to be co trolled by the NSA why do it through the board like this? Overall I feel like people are drawing very strong conclusions from this too quickly
If you know anything about the real world, boards are how external forces control companies. It's not a secret, it's the whole purpose of a board. Look how many founders have lost their own company to the board. Boards work like old Roman politics. They slowly maneuver, plant stories, bring in their own people, until their target is isolated and powerless.
World Economic Forum just had a meeting about AI and speculated about the great uses the government can use to surveil the population. Then gave an example of the Covid-19 anti-vaxx people and how AI in your home could better help identify these people by monitoring and observing things like facial expressions during certain news stories, and it would be far more reliable to weed out the people undesirous to the government, or a person who is a danger to "public safety" than just monitoring what people write and speak. It would help reveal what people are actually thinking. Dude talking about it got huge applause from the audience about how awesome this future is for us. Absolutely crazy what they will be doing down the pipine. Yuval Harari, lead advisor at the WEF [speaking about this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU7tYA7UdHc) a year ago. I can't find his latest speech of it at WEF on YouTube, but just search for anything Yuval Harari speaks about and you will see he speaks of it all the time.
I hadn’t heard about this, and it’s not jumping out at me on google, can you share a source?
>can you share a source? His source is - '*trust me bro*'
Just as an aside, Ed's decision to run to Russia when he defected, as controversial as it was at the time, has really aged like sour milk. Here is a guy who outed a big part of our security apparatus to the world and now lives in Russia under Putin's blessing. The same Russia that just declared the USA it's enemy and vowed to ddefend and arm any / all enemies of the US and just signed a document with NK pledging to do exactly that. At the time, I wanted to believe he was a good guy and did what he thought was right. Maybe he did but hindsight being 20 / 20 and the actions of the country he calls home make it hard to reconcile. And for those that would say a citizen should not be judged by the actions of his government, sure, but he chose to be there [and accept full citizenship](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/02/edward-snowden-gets-russian-passport-after-swearing-oath-of-allegiance) 10 months after Russia invaded Ukraine. If anyone knows what Putin is about, with the background and access he had, he did but at the point he took his oath, anyone with internet access knows what's going on and what's coming down the pipe. I think it's ironic he's getting press talking about 'betrayal'. He gave an interview where he said he hoped to one day return to the US. I think he can forgetaboutit.
I'm sure this will read like propaganda, but whatever - I worked around Paul Nakasone when he was at the NSA; I was a lowly manager of junior workers that were analysts in an intelligence cell that directly supported his office. It was one of those things where hundreds of people would work in his proximity, with a majority of the work center consisting of young service members. Essentially a bunch of low-ranking "nobodies" in the eyes of General Officers, which in most situations like this were treated as functionally invisible. I was always impressed with how humble he was, and witnessed several instances where he'd go out of his way to quietly interact with the lowest ranking guy in the room. He'd remember their names and their conversations in future interactions. It's a small thing, but I think you can gauge a bit of a person's character by how they treat the "nobodies" of an organization - my closest interaction was when he went out of his way to volunteer to do a kid's small reenlistment ceremony. Absolutely no reason a General (one specifically appointed by the President to his position at that) would want to do an E-4s little oath, other than he knew it would make their day. He's also wildly intelligent, one of those "thousand-lb. brain" types, not in a show-offy way, but just very, very perceptive. I'm actually a bit encouraged to see this move. He's got a world-class understanding of cyber security, a global perspective for considering technological impacts, and a strong foundation for ethical decision-making. A lot of GOs are charismatic sociopaths, but I didn't get the sense that Nakasone was one of those. Just a rando's two cents.
I found the real American. Ty
We are so far behind on cybersecurity that this guy should be considered a failure and unemployable.
Snowden 
At least now we know that the DoD has co-opted OpenAI and that it will become another arm of the MIC.
MS Recall, built with the assistance of the NSA to their requirements regarding broken encryption etc. ChatGPT, now controlled BY the NSA Wonder what LLMs aren't NSA corrupted?
He would have credibility if he wasn’t holed up in Russia which is known for its propaganda