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.
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.
Need the ability to submit queries anonymously, with disposable accounts. How about an AI add-on for a VPN service?
I don’t think this is practical advice for the vast majority of people
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
