from Hacker News

Snowden: "They've gone full mask-off: do not ever trust OpenAI or its products"

by underlogic on 6/14/24, 10:13 PM with 159 comments

  • by shirro on 6/15/24, 1:03 AM

    Snowden is one of those guys like Stallman who you can disagree with and think their position is extreme but it is foolish to completely dismiss them. There is currently a gold rush to circumvent IP rights and exploit the works of billions without attribution or remuneration while society and legislators are sleeping.

  • by vouaobrasil on 6/14/24, 10:29 PM

    I don't need Snowden to tell me not to trust OpenAI. The feeling I got when reading just a few words when I first found out about the company was the same feeling one gets when walking into a used car shop run by the guy who bullied you in high school.

  • by threeseed on 6/14/24, 10:36 PM

    Of course there is a legitimate reason for having Nakasone on the board.

    OpenAI is highly sensitive to regulation which is why they have such a large lobbying team trying to push the US government in their direction. He (a) brings political connections and (b) gives confidence that any advancements won't threaten US national security. It is pretty common amongst enterprise boards.

    The reality is that the perceptions of what AI can do is impacting the world far more than what it can actually do.

  • by joemi on 6/14/24, 10:45 PM

    From the same tweet: "This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth."

    Sounds like a bit of a hyperbole to me.

  • by newscracker on 6/15/24, 3:52 AM

    In light of this, Apple’s choice to integrate with ChatGPT from OpenAI looks worse. Even with its privacy promises of not revealing much information and asking the user explicitly, these and other events in OpenAI should trigger serious concerns with Apple executives. The top Apple executives have said that they started with ChatGPT because it’s the best. Maybe this partnership won’t be around this time next year.

  • by omoikane on 6/14/24, 10:56 PM

  • by delichon on 6/15/24, 12:59 AM

    I ask so many questions of chatbots across so many topics and it has proven valuable many times. But I'm certainly untrusting and wary of them and don't really doubt that I am being surveilled in detail. But I struggle to find scenarios in which it could be used against me. I'd pay more for more privacy and am interested in hosting my own. But of my 99 problems this is pretty far down the list.

    Once I sent some saliva to 23andMe. At least some of that data was stolen and I'm probably on a list of ashkenazim for sale somewhere. That's unpleasant. While I can't think of a problem with being surveilled by chatbots now maybe I'm just not being imaginative enough.

  • by hecanjog on 6/14/24, 10:38 PM

    The rest of the tweet (I assume) is quoted here in case you have twitter blocked too:

    https://fortune.com/2024/06/14/edward-snowden-eviscerates-op...

  • by Tronickle on 6/14/24, 11:04 PM

    Yes, it's somewhat clear that some type collaboration between OpenAI and government is in place. But why it can be so dramatically bad?

  • by oriel on 6/15/24, 12:23 AM

    Another one bites the dust. Added to the list, paid account canceled, data deleted, account deleted.

    Its becoming easier and easier to step back from a service and consider if its essential (its not, as a rule), and remove it WHEN it becomes an abusive relationship.

    OpenAI was not a good dog.

  • by egberts1 on 6/16/24, 3:42 PM

    Until AI provides citations, AI is inherently by design untrustworthy.

  • by sroerick on 6/14/24, 10:41 PM

    Is the implication that they’re training OpenAI on NSA data?

  • by AndrewKemendo on 6/14/24, 10:53 PM

    OpenAI - whose CEO is Sam Altman, is financially backed by Microsoft, using Microsoft infrastructure and search and is now embedded in Apple, has crossed the line by adding the former NSA/CSS Commander to the board?

    I’m a huge Snowden fan but cmon dude…Give me a break

    OpenAI was never some indie thing

    OpenAI is the most perfect physical manifestation of cynical, alienating, self-important narcissistic capitalism that has ever been seen

    You would think LVMH would take this title, but there’s no more hypnotizing scrying device for burgeoning psychopathic narcissists (CEOs, “influencers”, rappers etc..) than the endless fawning solipsism on demand from a simulacrum of a human

  • by nashashmi on 6/14/24, 10:42 PM

    What choice do we have?

  • by secondary_op on 6/15/24, 11:31 AM

    Snowden memoir not simply called "Permanent Record" if you like to read, it's in chapter: Part Three - Fourth Estate, or in audiobook at 08:30:24

    He writes about CIA CTO, Gus Hunt talk at GigaOM's Structure:Data conference in 2013, still available to witness https://youtu.be/GUPd2uMiXXg?t=1258

    TLDR: “At the CIA,” he said, “we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever.”

    > The second event happened one year later, in March 2013—one week after Clapper lied to Congress and Congress gave him a pass. A few periodicals had covered that testimony, though they merely regurgitated Clapper’s denial that the NSA collected bulk data on Americans. But no so-called mainstream publication at all covered a rare public appearance by Ira “Gus” Hunt, the chief technology officer of the CIA. I’d known Gus slightly from my Dell stint with the CIA. He was one of our top customers, and every vendor loved his apparent inability to be discreet: he’d always tell you more than he was supposed to. For sales guys, he was like a bag of money with a mouth. Now he was appearing as a special guest speaker at a civilian tech event in New York called the GigaOM Structure: Data conference. Anyone with $40 could go to it. The major talks, such as Gus’s, were streamed for free live online.

    > I got insight, certainly, but of an unexpected kind. I had the opportunity of witnessing the highest-ranking technical officer at the CIA stand onstage in a rumpled suit and brief a crowd of uncleared normies—and, via the Internet, the uncleared world—about the agency’s ambitions and capacities. As his presentation unfolded, and he alternated bad jokes with an even worse command of PowerPoint, I grew more and more incredulous.

    > “At the CIA,” he said, “we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang on to it forever.” As if that wasn’t clear enough, he went on: “It is nearly within our grasp to compute on all human generated information.” The underline was Gus’s own. He was reading from his slide deck, ugly words in an ugly font illustrated with the government’s signature four-color clip art.

    now, coupled with pentagon shenanigans https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covi...

    > Nevertheless, the Pentagon’s clandestine propaganda efforts are set to continue. In an unclassified strategy document last year, top Pentagon generals wrote that the U.S. military could undermine adversaries such as China and Russia using “disinformation spread across social media, false narratives disguised as news, and similar subversive activities [to] weaken societal trust by undermining the foundations of government.”

    Good luck trusting OpenAI's generative seductive female operative with Johansson voice.

  • by imchillyb on 6/14/24, 10:50 PM

    OpenAI did the reasonable and logical thing here. They're easing themselves around regulatory hurdles, possibly avoiding Senate committee interrogations, and legitimizing themselves all with a single board seat.

    Snowden's being disingenuous. He knows all of this and has chosen to ignore the above in service of an agenda.

    What _actual_ choice did OpenAI have here? If they do not accept an NSA board member today, what would OpenAI be forced to accept later?