Snowden: "They've gone full mask-off: do not ever trust OpenAI or its products"
twitter.com
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Snowden’s true motivations are far less certain.
based on what? do you understand what he risked and is sacrifising for letting you know what was illegally done?
Yes? Snowdens position was never that the government shouldn’t be allowed to spy on citizens, it was just that individual warrants should be sought instead of what he perceived as illegal “catch all” approvals of broad spying on everyone.
There are good people in intelligence agencies. And there are also good whistleblowers.
You can assume that, but it's like saying that anyone working in big tech supports child labor in lithium mines. In the strictest sense you're kinda right, but a lot of these people are legitimately stupid and don't know how the sausage is made or think they're one of the "good guys". I'd rather those people have a late change-of-heart than continue to stay complicit in things we can both easily agree are immoral.
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.
How do we know these board seats are real and not just rubber stamping everything for the free pay check?
And aside from being NSA director he was Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, experience highly relevant to both OpenAI's security and safety posture, and to selling to government and defense buyers.
So if you were Sam the smart thing to do is to get your platform embedded absolutely everywhere before the heat starts to come out of this iteration of AI.
Source?
Could you elaborate on this? What impact is the perception of what AI can do having? And what impact is it actually having?
A) Copyright. The AI companies are blatantly disregarding practically everyones copyright when they train on all the data they can find online. The rights holders have not given them permission to do so.
B) Privacy. Companies are just taking all the data of their customers and using for training. This is directly in opposition with GDPR, recently established in the Eurozone. Companies, notably Meta, are arguing - oh but AI is so important, that we do not have to ask for users consent.
C) Compute/algorithms. Regulations on "AI" itself. With several actors, notably OpenAI/Altman saying it is so dangerous that only corporations like them can do it responsibly, aiming to do regulatory capture which benefits them.
Large forces from the biggest companies in the world are attempting to change the legal landscape, and manipulate the perception of politicians and the public to ensure sufficient support to get the changes through.
Sounds like a bit of a hyperbole to me.
His words reflect his personal experience as a person who feels compelled to point out legitimate dangers to a free and democratic society.
It turns out that “free and democratic “ societies react harshly to criticism of their powerful agencies.
Ironically, he has ended up having to flee to a place that is much, much less “free and democratic” but letting him freely criticise the rest of the world is politically useful for now, so he is allowed the bully pulpit.
Please do elaborate. I am not aware of any information that Snowden has published that was not factually correct and informative.
I think that of all people, Snowden would have a much more nuanced understanding of what it means for a former NSA chief to join the board of a company like OAI.
What does it mean when a Russian citizen [0] on social media smears an American company that's blocked Russian disinformation campaigns [1] for appointing somebody that's been in charge of defending against Russian disinformation campaigns [2], who has said as recently as last month: “If they are trying to influence or interfere in our elections, we should make it as hard as possible for them.”[3]?
(Vf guvf ahnaprq haqrefgnaqvat be vf vg vafvahngvba?)
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/02/edward-snowd...
[1] https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-...
[2] https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/3508639-cyber-comma...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/us/politics/russia-disinf...
Being a career military person that ends up as a head of a three letter agency requires a very specific kind of professional focus, worldview, and set of priorities.
A better example might be if a former member of the grateful dead joined the board of OAI. That would also be an indication of an intentional incorporation of a worldview into the guiding intellect of a company.
1. "This person has a specific professional history"
2. ???
3. "This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on earth"
The underwear -gnomeish jump here I think is: the “only” reasonable explanation for this (overtly terrible from an optics perspective) selection is that this is the NSA getting their hooks deeply into openAI in the same way they did with Google, which can now be reasonably considered a commercial extension or at least a close partner of the NSA.
Arguably, googles business model is based on violating the privacy of every person on earth to the maximum extent that they can get away with, so the somewhat hyperbolic statement seems less extreme in that context.
But, that is just my interpretation, I’m not in his head, so I could definitely be wrong. Still, this is my best estimate of the situation.
The only thing missing is the motive of harm, which is handily replaced by the motive of profit with indifference to harm.
My hypothesis is that in his time with the NSA, Snowden witnessed the cartoon-villainy that he called out, and that because of that experience, he identifies this recent event (of appointing an ex-NSA military officer to guide OAI) as a highly probable symptom of further villainy, this time is something arguably more expansive and impactful than FAANG.
It seems to me a rather reasonable conclusion , and framing it in sensational terms as the most reasonable approach to “sound the alarm “- a role that, for better or for worse, Snowden has taken.
Where there is smoke, there is fire is still an extremely useful adage, despite the overt lack of scientific rigor in its application.
This is not what I had in mind when I hoped I would live in interesting times.
Like how some of OpenAI's current challenges include a) not leaking everything they create to the PRC and b) not having their tools abused for disinformation campaigns, so they appointed someone with leadership experience in keeping secrets from the PRC and combating disinformation campaigns.
Or did you mean "NSA man bad"?
This is the ROT13 cipher. Uryyb, sryybj unpxref.
To the contrary, Snowden is an object lesson in what happens when you actually take your oaths to protect democracy and freedom seriously. Taking those oaths seriously is almost
always punished with the full coercive force of the state. They are supposed to be interpreted as being loyal to one’s superiors, not as actual commitments to any abstract set of principles or ideals.
Living unmolested in hierarchical societies is mostly an exercise in the effective interpretation of doublespeak and toeing the line.
All he did there was fail to believe that Putin would actually do something quite that extremely terrible. (Not my assumption. Later tweets supplied that.)
He was accusing Biden and the media of probably crying wolf.
He expressed a perfectly valid and supported-by-evidense opinion that the media stokes fires and the US manipulates the people via the media, and therefor you shouldn't just accept everything without question.
The media and the US government do in fact both do those things. You in fact should not just accept everything without question. That is all true and was true on that day too, because it's true at all times every day.
Merely in that case, that specific claim by Biden and the media was not false.
And because he got that wrong, he stopped tweeting at all because he considered his opinions and advice of low value on that subject. What lack of integrity!
Try again.
"perfectly valid and supported-by-evidense opinion"
He was clearly holding an invalid, incorrect opinion and supported the Putin state position that allowed a better chance of a surprise coup on Kyiv.
Educated geopol and intel circles already knew about the impending invasion months before, a very major "how the world works" event. That he was so crassly wrong, months after it was obvious, should be a stark lesson to you that Snowden does not in fact know "how the world works." and you should appropriately downgrade his opinion on such matters. If you did not know about this invasion in 2021, your intel sources and analysis are also garbage like Snowdens.
But it sounds like you'll twist anything to support your preconceived notions, even when confronted with the obvious contradictions. Try again
I don't think you are in a great position from which to to remark about anyone else's twisting and preconceived notions and contradictions.
Clearly implicating that US-adjacent media is the prime culprit for wanting war, not the 100k Russian troops already stationed on the border, with plans from months before to assault Ukraine and kill thousands. Rather than the media simply announcing, months late, the impending invasion.
"if nobody shows up for the invasion Biden scheduled for tomorrow morning at 3AM"
Clearly implicating Biden as being the one wanting the invasion to happen, instead of accurately warning the world what is going to transpire, and that nothing is going to happen anyway (wrong).
"your journalistic credibility was instrumentalized as part of one of those disinformation campaigns"
The journalism wasn't uncredible! It wasn't disinformation! It was accurately reporting the impending invasion.
Nothing here is ambiguous at all with decent reading comprehension. Snowden himself says "If there's an invasion tomorrow, dunk on me because I have been spectacularly wrong."
You are clearly the one with the "twisting and preconceived notions and contradictions." because you're denying Snowden was wrong when he literally admits it.
When interpreting public content, it is generally useful to carefully consider the perverse and straightforward incentives and value propositions of the parties involved. Most public speech (and most “news”) is fundamentally characterisable as some flavor of PR exercise.
This reminds me so much of that moment
Then I remember how bad Siri is. OpenAI has basically shamed Apple out of no where. They desperately need this just to look competitive in the space .. which is weird and unfortunate
I think the best thing Apple could do is let the user choose which AI to load in. It could be like iTunes or the App Store and called the AI store. Then AI providers can compete on privacy & effectiveness. The store would need lots of features to enable comparison though or users won’t be able to decide which ones might be worth picking.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24178079/openai-board-pau...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40680962 - Former head of NSA joins OpenAI board
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.
We'll be immersed in AI feedback and we'll all be influenced by the advice it provides. There won't really be a "source" in the sense Google sends you to BuzzFeed and you know you're reading trash. It'll all have the veneer of authority because ChatGPT said so. The product is trust. Would you ask a malicious thug the same questions and reveal your private details? No.
You can feel as untrusting as you want, but the streams of AI advice are like water and we're just like fish. It's influencing you, and if you don't realize how then you probably could pay closer attention.
I for one don't think it's a coincidence that Microsoft is pushing Windows Recall for consumers (keeping a permanent index of deleted files), pushing OneDrive as the default save location for O365 enterprise, and sinking billions into OAI.
https://fortune.com/2024/06/14/edward-snowden-eviscerates-op...
(I clicked the link to see what fresh breakage they’d display instead of the current tweet. Oddly, the article link works. That hasn’t happened to me in ages.)
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.
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
> endless fawning solipsism on demand from a simulacrum of a human
ChatGPT: Every narcissist's best friend. Why settle for a stupid and fallible human when you can have an algorithmically optimized yes-man trained on all of human knowledge and available 24/7/365.
Need the ability to submit queries anonymously, with disposable accounts. How about an AI add-on for a VPN service?
Regarding llama3, it works for some applications, not for others demanding higer intelligence. Surely there will be a llama4 and a 5. They're coming fast.
https://openlm.ai/coder-evalplus/ says that CodeQwen1.5-7B-Chat is the best open model for coding.
https://huggingface.co/spaces/open-llm-leaderboard/open_llm_... lists davidkim205/Rhea-72b-v0.5 as the best open model overall.
https://leaderboard.tabbyml.com/ lists DeepSeekCoder-6.7B as the best for coding.
The takeaway is that Llama 3 looks a lot better than Llama 2, and I expect this trend to continue to 4 and 5, to the point where 5 could overtake GPT4.
I don’t think this is practical advice for the vast majority of people
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.
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?
Also, they should focus on developing AGI, not on buying wortheless executives that the consumer or taxpayer has to pay for.
Regulatory capture is SOP for tech bros.