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Snowden: "They've gone full mask-off: do not ever trust OpenAI or its products"
- krapp 2y ago[flagged]
- timeon 2y agoSir this is Tweet.
- xenospn 2y ago[flagged]
- A_D_E_P_T 2y agoAre you aware of the circumstances of how he ended up there? I'm not sure what options you think he had.
- RegularOpossum 2y agoShould have never run and would have been out free by now like Chelsea Manning.
- kemotep 2y agoSame with Reality Winner. Seems like everyone else who blew the whistle about this stuff didn’t need to run away.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoMy guess is he'd be serving a life sentence.
- pizzzle 2y ago[flagged]
- segasaturn 2y agoHe may have, but it's not as like we knew Manning was going to be pardoned in 2013. She was also put through extremely cruel and unusual treatment during detention, such as being kept in solitary confinement for months at a time for no reason other than to make an example.
- dturdr 2y ago[flagged]
- Glyptodon 2y agoPowers that be have always had it in waaaaaay more for Snowden. I don't think he'd be free like Manning.
- dturdr 2y ago[flagged]
- viraptor 2y agoUnless you're involved in that decision making process and leaking the information here, that's just pure random guy internet speculation. The scope for them was very different and you're basically saying "trust this with your life, you'll be totally fine".
- klAsglx 2y agoWhat is this based on? No matter what people think he deserves, my guess is that Snowden, like Assange, is a character that the ruling class wants to make an example of. Chelsea Manning does not threaten the ruling class, especially after you know what. Assange is still being charged.
- janice1999 2y agoRemember when Mike Pompeo, who would go on to be both a CIA Director and Secretary of State, publicly called for Snowden to be executed. I do.
- Smeevy 2y agoI totally agree that he didn't have many options. A consequence of him choosing to be under the protection of an adversary of my country is that his opinions about my country carry much less weight with me now.
- fooker 2y agoBut it is not an opinion about your country, unless you think there's significant symbiosis between OpenAI and the US government, proving his point.
- Smeevy 2y agoQuite the opposite. He's saying that OpenAI is a tool of the American surveillance state. I don't even really disagree with that. Edward Snowden saying it while under the protection of the Russian government makes me look for ulterior motives. That's how we're supposed to treat disinformation, isn't it?
- fooker 2y agoIf you don't disagree with that, what do you disagree wih here? Of course criticizing the US is the ulterior motive here, doesn't make the criticism false.
- cryptoegorophy 2y agoI wonder what the options are. Seems like any developed country would given him to USA without any issues no matter how illegal it is (see Kim Dotcom saga), and out of all the “pro Russia “ options Russia(Moscow) is the most developed one to have a good lifestyle.
- georgeplusplus 2y agohow he ended up there has no impact on what influence Putin has over him now. Which is a lot. And incase you don’t follow the war in Ukraine, where dissidents and journalists are jailed for straying even slightly from the main narrative. He doesn’t get a free pass, hes very likely pressured to a large degree especially given the influencer like status he wields.
- Smeevy 2y agoI wonder if he has any thoughts about the war in Ukraine? That's weird... he hasn't tweeted (xeeted?) anything about that.
- AlexandrB 2y agoTotally irrelevant. And I say this as someone who still has family in Ukraine. Why does it matter what Snowden has to say about Ukraine? He's neither a subject matter expert on the topic nor particularly known for his geopolitical opinions.
- tempestn 2y agoNot to mention he clearly wouldn't be free to talk openly about it.
- joemi 2y agoI think that's why they mentioned Ukraine - to point out that it's always in Snowden's best interest to be critical of the US and US things, and remind us to bear that in mind when considering him and what he says.
- ok_dad 2y agoIs it wrong to be critical of the USA? I would judge his opinions based on merit, not where he lives and how free he is to talk. It’s telling that he hasn’t vocally supported Russia or really talked about certain related topics, he chooses to focus on what he can talk about rather than fall victim to becoming a Russian asset. Sure, it’s in Russias favor to talk bad about the USA, but if it’s warranted to do so that’s not morally wrong or anything. In the USA we’re free to talk bad about our government, and suggesting doing so from another country is wrong is not correct. It’s okay to criticize power.
- joemi 2y agoLook at it this way, if someone is paid to say good things about the company they work for, you take what they say with a grain of salt, don't you? Snowden's situation is similar to this, in a way. He's being paid (by being allowed to stay there and to keep breathing) to criticize the US, so shouldn't we take what he says with a grain of salt? I'd argue that in Snowden's case, since it's not just his livelihood at stake (as with a company shill) but his freedom and likely his life, then he has even more incentive to stir the pot, color his statement's in Russia's favor, stretch truths, perhaps even outright lie, since the consequences of not living up to his side of the bargain are so dire. Note: I'm not saying he definitely does this, but.... grain of salt!
- poikroequ 2y agoMaybe, but with a gun pointed at his head. Or maybe there's just an open window nearby.
- jlaporte 2y agoAlthough you got downvoted into the ground, parent, note that nobody actually refuted what you said. Regardless of what anyone thinks of Snowden's motivations, propriety, loyalty, etc, there's just no question that willing or unwilling: yes, he lives his life at Putin's pleasure. If he did not have value to the Kremlin, he would not be free to communicate on Twitter/X. This shouldn't be controversial, and those that think it is are being naive.
- xenospn 2y agoOh that’s ok. I’m used to it by now - that’s the price I’m paying for commenting on HN these days :) a lot of reflex downvotes, it seems.
- vouaobrasil 2y agoI 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.
- ranger_danger 2y agoMany people DO need someone to tell them though. Would you rather nothing was said at all?
- vouaobrasil 2y agoOf course not. I want more people to say it. I want everyone to say it, to condemn OpenAI, to condemn big tech ad nauseum. I want everyone to stop using big tech products as much as possible and I want big tech to go bankrupt.
- threeseed 2y agoOf 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.
- bagels 2y agoIf you want to sell to the government, this is also a good idea.
- contingencies 2y agoLet's crowdsource some prompt engineering to win an election.
- threeseed 2y agoAccording to the OpenAI CTO, ChatGPT5 is not going to break new ground. 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.
- IAmGraydon 2y ago>According to the OpenAI CTO, ChatGPT5 is not going to break new ground. Source?
- threeseed 2y ago"Mira Murati says the AI models that OpenAI have in their labs are not much more advanced than those which are publicly available." https://x.com/tsarnick/status/1801022339162800336?s=46 https://x.com/tsarnick/status/1801022339162800336?s=46
- hecanjog 2y agoThe 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-openai-paul-nakasone-board-directors-decision/ https://fortune.com/2024/06/14/edward-snowden-eviscerates-op...
- random_kris 2y ago[flagged]
- hedora 2y agoHeads up: The “article” page has a warning that they’re moving to x.com. Time to add an entry to your filter list. (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.)
- _lvbh 2y agoI don’t have Twitter blocked but I can’t see anything on it. 80% of the time I get some generic error and “try again”
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sroerick 2y agoIs the implication that they’re training OpenAI on NSA data?
- rglover 2y agoOther way around. OpenAI and others are the new Google search. The likely suggestion is that OpenAI chats will just be another XKEYSCORE input and OpenAI's algorithms will assist in parsing/forming conclusions on existing data on behalf of the government (a likely bet as there are plenty of rumors swirling about government agencies integrating AI into their processes).
- nashashmi 2y agoWhat choice do we have?
- OutOfHere 2y agoYou have a choice, and it is simple. Earn money. Buy GPUs. Download llama3 or comparable open models. Run them. After you do, to the maximum extent possible, stop using the OpenAI LLMs. Stop willingly feeding the surveillance industrial complex.
- janalsncm 2y ago> Buy GPUs I don’t think this is practical advice for the vast majority of people
- OutOfHere 2y agoIt is for every reader on this site, coming as naturally as buying a computer.
- johnisgood 2y agoGPU_s_, ideally high-end ones, though.
- OutOfHere 2y agoHigh-end ones are needed more for large model training and unoptimized tuning, less so for inference alone. Most users would need just inference, at least in the beginning.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y agoThat's too expensive, quality of llama3 answers is way below ChatGPT 4o or Clause Opus, and consumer GPUs are not competitive with specialized chips. Need the ability to submit queries anonymously, with disposable accounts. How about an AI add-on for a VPN service?
- dturdr 2y ago[flagged]
- trandango 2y agoAccount created 31 minutes ago. Hmm...
- joemi 2y agoFrom 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.
- elevatedastalt 2y agoDunno the details of this specific issue, but hyperbole is pretty standard for Snowden. I don't blame him too much. The guy has been through hell. But let's just say his Twitter proclamations aren't exactly neutrally worded.
- pizzzle 2y ago[flagged]
- ok_dad 2y agoThere was the NSA who was spying on the public without warrants as a military organization, in contravention to the constitution. Probably they’re also to blame. He just told us about the violations of the highest laws we have.
- FormerBandmate 2y agohe's also probably watched like a hawk in russia. Who knows if that's even still his opinions
- oceanplexian 2y ago[flagged]
- tweetle_beetle 2y agoAccording to Wikipedia: his first noteworthy anti-corruption publication was in 2010, he was charged with corruption in 2012 with a 5 year suspended sentence, in 2014 he was placed under house arrest without due process or any access to family or lawyers, in 2016 he paid a large fine to avoid negative consequences for his brother who had been wrongly implicated alongside him, in 2019 he was charged with a contractual breach and in 2020 he was poisoned which ultimately led to his death via some more wrongful imprisonment and lack of access medical care. Looks like less than one decade of public anti-corruption work was enough for the state to attempt to murder one of the most famous politicians in the country with the rest of the world looking on. Not exactly sure how this can be seen as a regime with a notably high tolerance for dissenters.
- imchillyb 2y agoOpenAI 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?
- OutOfHere 2y agoOpenAI is very guilty of pushing for regulation of AI, leading to all these issues in the first place. They themselves created the poison of regulation for which they now purchased the antidote. They had a choice to not scaremonger or push for regulation, but to fight for freedom on constitutional grounds. Also, they should focus on developing AGI, not on buying wortheless executives that the consumer or taxpayer has to pay for.
- imchillyb 2y agoOpenAI is very guilty of pushing for regulation of AI, in order to be at the forefront of that technology. Regulatory capture is SOP for tech bros.
- AndrewKemendo 2y agoOpenAI - 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
- 20after4 2y agoI think yours is the most under-appreciated take on this entire hn thread. > 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.
- omoikane 2y ago> Source: The Verge https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24178079/openai-board-paul-nakasone-nsa-safety https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24178079/openai-board-pau... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40680962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40680962 - Former head of NSA joins OpenAI board
- Tronickle 2y agoYes, it's somewhat clear that some type collaboration between OpenAI and government is in place. But why it can be so dramatically bad?
- elforce002 2y agoProb. because their track record is not that transparent, hehe.
- oriel 2y agoAnother 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.
- delichon 2y agoI 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.
- unyttigfjelltol 2y agoIf all your friends and all their friends said the sky was purple, even though at odds with your observation, would you be bold enough to declare it blue? 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.
- k8svet 2y agoSuch a good reply. Even if somehow you avoid even creeping bit of AI (I'm trying as hard as I can), you will inevitably live amongst others that don't have the same information literacy or skepticism as some of us. And while using a chat bot might be personally innocent, any such users are absolutely feeding and training the beast and enabling OpenAI's next oversteps.
- rchaud 2y agoOpenAI will presumably offer more than a chatbot in the future. Even so, you can already upload files into it for analysis. 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.
- shirro 2y agoSnowden 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.
- cainxinth 2y agoRichard Stallman has never done a single thing to make me believe he’s anything other than motivated by deeply held principles rooted in the right to privacy and other individual liberties. Snowden’s true motivations are far less certain.
- redeeman 2y ago> 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?
- jhbadger 2y agoThe problem with a whistleblower from an intelligence agency is much like one from a tobacco company. Yes, they may be nobler than their peers in those institutions who didn't blow the whistle, but at the end of the day, they are the sort of person who would work at an intelligence agency or tobacco company in the first place.
- m463 2y agoYou seem to imply that someone working for an intelligence agency is of poor character. There are good people in intelligence agencies. And there are also good whistleblowers.
- jhbadger 2y agoIt's difficult to imagine a person of good character, knowing the atrocities intelligence agencies regularly do (overthrow inconvenient foreign governments, spy on and blackmail civil rights and other groups trying to make a better society) joining such an agency. At best they simply don't care about being associated with such a agency. Otherwise they actually enjoy the idea. We knew since the 1960s the crap intelligence agencies do.
- newscracker 2y agoIn 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.
- al_borland 2y agoIt sounded like they made it flexible so they could slot in other models. Maybe it will even allow users to choose the model, once there are more options.
- thejazzman 2y agoRemember that time Steve was excited to integrate Facebook and Twitter into iOS as first class citizens? 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
- webninja 2y agoThey could use Mixtral, Minstral, XWin, Mythomax, or Claude 3 Haiku 196M. They’re all great and most/all are better than Siri. 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.
- secondary_op 2y agoSnowden 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 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-covid-propaganda/ 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.
- egberts1 2y agoUntil AI provides citations, AI is inherently by design untrustworthy.