Is Your Data Safe With OpenAI?
OpenAI goes For-Profit, Hires ex-NSA Head Paul Nakasone, AI data privacy, Edward Snowden, $50M for Gemini victims, Microsoft delays Recall + more
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The Hottest Thing in Tech this Week
Is Your Data Safe With OpenAI?
In the space of a week, two major revelations have prompted many to seriously question the direction OpenAI is taking. First, the company announced the addition of former NSA Director reality Paul Nakasone to its board. Then news leaked that the company is considering restructuring to adopt a for-profit model outside of the control of its nonprofit board.
NSAi?
Former NSA employee and domestic mass surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden has called Nakasone’s hiring a mask off moment. “They've gone full mask off: do not ever trust OpenAI or its products, there's only one reason for appointing an NSA director to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on earth. You've been warned."
So why did they bring him on? The official statement from board chair Bret Taylor was that his “unparalleled experience in areas like cybersecurity will help guide OpenAI in achieving its mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity." OK sounds legit right? But bear in mind this guy’s track record. Nakasone was in charge of mass surveillance at the NSA when the NSA outsourced illegal mass spying against Americans to British spy agencies to circumvent US constitutional protections. That move effectively endrun the constitution to give the NSA unlimited spying access to US networks to surveil US citizens. That doesn’t inspire a lot of trust.
Data Gold Rush
Snowden isn’t alone in his critique of this move. Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green tweeted, "I do think that the biggest application of AI is going to be mass population surveillance, so bringing the former head of the NSA into OpenAI has some solid logic behind it.” As Green has also said, putting the former NSA head (and retired general) on the board essentially signals that OpenAI is in fact open to doing business with the intelligence community and Department of Defence. In other words, open to giving the government access to your AI activity.
Not so Open
But its OK because OpenAI has that nonprofit mission of “ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity" right? Ah, maybe not for long. The company has confirmed the nonprofit is “core to our mission and will continue to exist.” Cool story, but its power to protect users’ rights will be exactly zero if users’ AI activity is routed through an entirely separate for-profit entity with all the shareholder and profit motive obligations that entails. The AI era is radically reshaping our online world and has reset the boundaries on data privacy and surveillance law. Companies will need to be increasingly careful about who they entrust their valuable AI-related data to moving forward.
“The intersection of AI with the ocean of mass surveillance data that's been building up over the past two decades is going to put truly terrible powers in the hands of an unaccountable few.”
— Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower and Privacy advocate
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