Edward Snowden warns public about OpenAI after it appointed an NSA director

Former NSA official and famed whistleblower Edward Snowden warned the public about OpenAI and its products after the company appointed a retired NSA director to its board.

On June 13, OpenAI announced that it was appointing retired US Army General Paul M. Nakasone to the company's board of directors, which OpenAI says reflects the company's commitment to safety and security. In its blog post, OpenAI states that Nakasone will join the Board's Safety and Security Committee and that his insights will influence recommendations made to the Board of Directors regarding safety and security decisions across OpenAI's products.

While OpenAI and US government officials on Capitol Hill regard this hiring as a win, not everyone is totally convinced, with former NSA officials and whistleblower Edward Snowden took to his personal X account to write, "They've gone full mask off: do not ever trust OpenAI or its products. There is 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 have been warned."

Snowden wasn't the only cybersecurity researcher that was suspicious of OpenAI's adoption of Nakasone, with Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green posting on X, "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."

Keeping in the same vein of AI potentially being used as public surveillance, Nakasone wrote in the OpenAI blogpost, "OpenAI's dedication to its mission aligns closely with my own values and experience in public service. I look forward to contributing to OpenAI's efforts to ensure artificial general intelligence is safe and beneficial to people around the world."