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.”
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.