Edward Snowden wrote on social media to his nearly 6 million followers, “Do not ever trust @OpenAI … You have been warned,” following the appointment of retired U.S. Army General Paul Nakasone to the board of the artificial intelligence technology company.
Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) subcontractor, was charged with espionage by the Justice Department in 2013 after leaking thousands of top-secret records, exposing the agency’s surveillance of private citizens’ information.
In a Friday morning post on X, formerly Twitter, Snowden reshared a post providing information on OpenAI’s newest board member. Nakasone is a former NSA director, and the longest-serving leader of the U.S. Cyber Command and chief of the Central Security Service. He retired from the NSA, a position he held since 2018, in February.
Snowden wrote in an X post, “They’ve gone full mask-off: do not ever trust @OpenAI or its products (ChatGPT etc.) There is only one reason for appointing an @NSAGov Director to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth.” He concluded the post, writing, “You have been warned.”
Newsweek making it sound like Snowden is a James Bond villain issuing pronouncements from his skull-shaped island lair.
Posts like these really bring out the Nextdoor app type lemmy people. Everything’s a conspiracy.
Point is it doesn’t matter who they add to OpenAI, OpenAI is already a problem. There is no conspiracy, you missed the boat. Your data is already being scraped, traded and sold to the Nth degree by corporations, and the government just goes ahead and buys it instead of forming yet another agency to scrape it all themselves (yay, privatization?). OpenAI is just the next level of the same. Doesn’t matter who is on the board, the damage has already been done. So Snowden is way behind the times and frankly his commentary is irrelevant - or at least nothing that the news hasn’t been complaining about with the rampant theft of IP by AI makers for the last couple of years or more.
Snowden just said that they had gone “mask-off” - so I think it was just aimed at those who still refuses to believe it.
exactly, anyone trusting AI companies in general beforehand and being swayed by this one statement from Snowden, doesn’t understand the technology or environment enough to be effectively skeptical in the first place.
Thing is that Snowden isn’t really a figure I think most people would listen to. I think he’s cut off from any valuable information that would offer him anything groundbreaking to reveal and I think he’s probably somewhat isolated in his current situation.
Edit: really? You downvoters just Snowden fans? Care to actually offer up a reason you think my comment isn’t right? Snowden is hiding out in a foreign country that has to keep him at arm’s length, trot him out when he’s useful, but not offer him access to anything actually important.
Strong down vote ratio…
Can’t tell if “AI” bros or the spooks are butthurt today.
There are a significant number of people who also really hate Snowden for various reasons (he’s a traitor, he ran to Russia, etc.) and don’t care whether or not he’s making a good point.
He didn’t really choose Russia, it was the only country that would protect him from rendition.
Not even that. He was headed to Cuba, the US government forced him to be in Russia.
“NSA leaker Edward Snowden got stuck at a Moscow airport after Cuba, feeling pressure from Washington, warned that it would not allow an Aeroflot flight from Russia to land in Havana if he were aboard”
Maybe at first it was a lack of options, but he’s absolutely become a Russian asset since then. Doesn’t mean he’s wrong about OpenAI, but still.
He’s a Russian PR win, but I haven’t seen him be especially pro-Putin or anything.
He’s not overtly pro-putin, but he did accept Russian citizenship and was denying the possibility of Ukraine being invaded until like literally the day before the invasion started, which was long after it was obvious Russia was planning to invade.
He accepted Russian citizenship for his own safety so he could never be extradited to the U.S. and yeah, I’m not shocked he didn’t do something that would come with a big risk in Russia.
So neither of those really work as accusations.
He accepted Russian citizenship for his own safety so he could never be extradited to the U.S
He got Russian citizenship less than 2 years ago. Why was extradition suddenly a concern when it wasn’t for the previous near decade he had lived there without citizenship?
yeah, I’m not shocked he didn’t do something that would come with a big risk in Russia.
That’s the thing, he didn’t need to do anything. He could’ve just not said anything at all, but instead he was outright claiming the idea of Russia invading Ukraine was nothing but US propaganda up until like literally a day(iirc) before the invasion actually started.
You could argue he’s only acting as a Russian asset for his own safety, but he’s still acting as a Russian asset.
This kind of rhetoric is for conservatives / Trump supporters / conspiracy theorists.
The way he implies there’s an agenda behind the hire without actually articulating it, the way he leads you on and then assumes you’ll take the implication for granted, an unearned “this is a very bad thing!”, capped with a cryptic “You’ve been warned!”
This guy worked at the NSA for 15 months total over a decade ago. He’s been an internet warrior in Russia since then. I’m not sure Snowden’s got the credentials to make him a good source of info anymore.
Dude’s an American hero!
Maybe you don’t have the credentials to make an accurate assessment of his credentials
I didn’t trust Open AI before. But the the Kremlin signalling disapproval of it makes me slightly less distrustful.
Sure they still suck, but at least they’re not on Putin’s side.
This is the correct answer whenever this Russian intelligence asset opens his mouth.
