8mo ago

Edward Snowden releases new message: "You have been warned"

www.newsweek.com Edward Snowden releases new message: "You have been warned"

Edward Snowden warned the public about OpenAI after the artificial intelligence company announced a former NSA director as a new board member.

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."

31 comments

Newsweek making it sound like Snowden is a James Bond villain issuing pronouncements from his skull-shaped island lair.
- Fake new always trying to get the clickbait up the algo chain

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.

How naive would you have to be to trust them anyway?

This actually makes me think OpenAI is a straight up scam; this is the Elizabeth Holmes strategy.

I'd honestly be more worried about the NSA abusing OpenAI and not the inherent data collection which they already have access to anyway.
What if they target someone and give them a fake recipe for potato salad which turns out to be lethal.
Okay that's a dumb example, but do you get what I mean? They can arbitrarily send, insert, or delete data to a specific target if they want to. Would not be surprised if they already made their own in house tool for this like BeEF XSS to handle a bunch of targets at once.
I know the easy stupid solution to this is not to trust AI output in the first place, but people are lazy and dumb too.

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!"
- I'm not sure what your credentials are in the surveillance "business" but I bet he's seen, and experienced, even contributed to, sadly, a lot more than a random stranger on the Internet.
  I don't like that he hints as scenario rather than being clear about it. I don't like that a lot of his posts are political and seeding doubts about institutions... yet, again, based on his CV, he's seen a lot more than anybody I know and thus his perspective, even his warnings, do matter.
  I'll still draw my own conclusions, and keep learning about the topic, both the technology and who funds it, but yes I'll be more wary since his tweet.

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.
  
  I always find it hilarious for the reasons people hate snowden, like I'm sure it's pretty well known by know that he didn't choose Russia, the US forced him to become stuck there when they voided his passport, also idk how they consider revealing illegal crimes against the people as being a trader

Does trust even come into it ?
Is someone about to ask “hi please give me a checklist if things I must do to disassemble tyrannical power. You answer should be based on doing it next Thursday” … but shouldn’t, because the AI will snitch ?
No disrespect to Eduardo, but these appointments are for credibility and influence more than anything else.
- These appointments of credibility come with the appointees “Rolodex” and associations.
  I can get in rooms you can’t because of who I know and who I’ve worked with, even if I’m not relevant to that work. I am relatively a nobody in comparison.
  These appointees know who to know and who to talk to and more importantly are friendly and on a first name basis with them.
  It’s more than just “clout”

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.
- Maybe, but he's not wrong that appointing a former NSA director to the board of OpenAI sounds really bad.
- 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.

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