The founding director of Vanderbilt University’s Institute for National Defense and Global Security, retired General Paul Nakasone, has been appointed to OpenAI’s Board of Directors as a member of its Safety and Security Committee. Nakasone previously served as commander of U.S. Cyber Command, direc...
No reasons to be concerned, citizen. The former head of the largest surveillance agency in the world just joined as a C-level member to the largest data scraping company in the world
Remain calm. Assume the position. Your patience is appreciated. A legally authorized operative will be with you shortly. Stop resisting. Or else it gets the hose again.
It's a bit of a non-story, beyond basic press release fodder.
In addition to it's role as "digital panopticon", they also have a legitimate role in cyber security assurance, and they're perfectly good at it. The guy in question was the head of both the worlds largest surveillance entity, but also the world's largest cyber security entity.
Opinions on the organization aside, that's solid experience managing a security organization.
If open AI wants to make the case that they take security seriously, former head of the NSA, Cyber command and central security service as well as department director at a university and trustee at another university who has a couple masters degrees isn't a bad way to try to send that message.
Other comments said open AI is the biggest scraping entity on the planet, but that pretty handily goes to Google, or more likely to the actual NSA, given the whole "digital panopticon" thing and "Google can't fisa warrant the phone company".
Joining boards so they can write memos to the CEO/dean/regent/chancellor is just what former high ranking government people do. The job aggressively selects for overactive Leslie Knope types who can't sit still and feel the need to keep contributing, for good or bad, in whatever way they think is important.
If the US wanted to influence open AI in some way, they'd just pay them. The Feds budget is big enough that bigger companies will absolutely prostrate themselves for a sample of it. Or if they just wanted influence, they'd... pay them.
They wouldn't do anything weird with retired or "retired" officers when a pile of money is much easier and less ambiguous.
At worst it's open AI trying to buy some access to the security apparatus to get contracts. Seems less likely to me, since I don't actually think they have anything valuable for that sector.
Lol. There are tons of security experts out there they could've hired. As Snowden said there's only one reason you hire from the NSA, to work with the NSA.
Yeah, there are a ton of security experts. But none of them are the former head of the NSA.
Snowden is not exactly a font of expertise in this area, so I'm not sure that his opinion is particularly relevant. His only actual relevance is that he had access to classified data. He had no role in policy, and never had anything to do with business hiring practices.
there are a ton of security experts. But none of them are the former head of the NSA.
That doesn't make the point you think it makes. 🙂
Look at it this way. You can get the same expertise, in any branch you'd care to name, elsewhere. Hiring, security etc.
What this guy is uniquely positioned to do, what you can't get from anybody else, is oversight of integration with NSA surveillance. And that's where the smell comes from.
Well, I'd contend that the same expertise isn't just readily available. Yes, he's uniquely positioned for connection to the surveillance apparatus, but the reputation of being the federal governments head security is also a unique credential.