Former head of NSA joins OpenAI board | Hacker News Reader

Former head of NSA joins OpenAI board

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25 pointskristianpaul11 comments

Every timw you get the head of some governmental three-letter agency joining the board of a major tech corporation, it's almost always related to that corporation going for some major government contracts.

Case example: General Keith Alexander joins Amazon, 2020

> "The high-ranking appointment of the former commander of the US Cyber Command comes as Amazon Web Services continues to dispute the Department of Defense's award of a $10 billion military cloud contract to rival Microsoft"

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/former-nsa-head-k...

Result (2022):

> "An AWS spokesperson said: “We’re honored that after thorough review, the NSA selected AWS as the cloud provider for the Hybrid Compute Initiative, and we’re ready to help deliver this critical national security capability.”"

https://fedscoop.com/nsa-re-awards-10b-wildandstormy-cloud-c...

A good bet is that OpenAI is going full-tilt for major government contracts in the secrecy world as a means to bump revenue as their private sector business doesn't really seem to be booming. This is not unusual in the tech sector - IBM for example survived for at least a decade during the Depression by running the government's Social Security program - but this means OpenAI is now in the mass surveillance business.

How do you know their private sector business is not booming?

Seems bad... Though I don't think I'm informed enough to know exactly why. The NSA is just coded in my brain as Generally Not Trustworthy. The addition of Larry Summers has me feeling a similar way. My general feeling is that these are not people who particularly care about humanity writ large.

Seems more like everyone's looking for a payday.

Interesting move to make in an election year.

At least they don't hide their intentions anymore

AI will be a formidable weapon from surveillance, propaganda, indoctrination, information war within and outside USA. Of course the executive branch (which includes the white house, all institutions it controls and military) is going to use it, for domestic and foreign policy purposes, with no checks and balance, no accountability or restrain.

I really wonder who downvotes these comments. These are not conspiracy theories anymore, at least not after Prism was revealed in 2013.

Concerning indeed. There's an alarming amount of redditor-types who take great pride in internet surveillance and censorship, and I'm convinced they're either trolls, or truly naive enough to believe they won't be targets of what they defend so ferociously. As long as their political enemies appear to be in the crosshairs, they'll die on that hill.

So they're saying the quiet part out loud now...

Guess this is the last iPhone for me, which is probably good frankly. I’m not that impressed on the utility or necessity of AI for myself and don’t want it processing basically the entirety of my life.

I will highlight a mysterious throw away comment made over a year ago about William Hurd. Maybe anon man will come back here with more insight:

User: Ta08131942 date March 30 2023

“Facts worth considering: Will Hurd joined the board of OpenAI in May 2021. Mr. Hurd, among other things, was a documented former CIA clandestine officer for nearly nine years.

He was a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during his tenure as a U.S. Rep replacing Mike Pompeo.

He is also a Managing Director of Allen & Co. who's Chairman is George Tenent the former director of the CIA. Further, Mr. Hurd is a member of the board of trustees of In-Q-Tel the primary external investment arm of the CIA and the broader US Intelligence Community.”

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ta08131942

Edit: more recent updates on Hurd, who resigned to run for president? https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/30/will-hurd-...

Anyways…

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