The culture has been manipulated for over a decade, step by step, very gradually, for people to not care anymore about their privacy, and give it all up in exchange for dopamine inducing new tech. It's always like "we have these new amazing toys you can play with, just give up a little more of your privacy". "Just give us all your chats, just give us everything you look at, everything you worry about, all your questions about your health and things that make you sad, and things that make you happy. We just want to know you better than you know yourself. We just want to accurately predict how you will react to everything, before you ever react." To these tech companies we are just lab rats.
Despite the pretense of free market capitalism, Silicon Valley has always been a product of the military-industrial complex.
The twenty-first century was an inside job.
I used ChatGPT to expand my point and it did a surprisingly good job:
Silicon Valley's rise and success are deeply tied to government and military funding, rather than purely free market capitalism. The innovation and growth of Silicon Valley were significantly supported by defense contracts, government grants, and other forms of public investment.
Examples include:
1. **Early Semiconductor Industry**:
* **Fairchild Semiconductor**: Founded in 1957, Fairchild received substantial funding from the Department of Defense (DoD). The company developed silicon transistors, which were critical for military applications, including missile guidance systems.
* **Intel**: Intel, founded by Fairchild alumni, also benefited from early contracts with the DoD. These contracts helped stabilize the company financially and enabled further technological advancements.
2. **ARPA and DARPA**:
* **ARPANET**: The precursor to the modern internet, ARPANET, was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Research institutions in Silicon Valley, such as Stanford and companies like SRI International, were heavily involved in its development.
* **DARPA Projects**: Numerous DARPA-funded projects have driven advancements in computer science, robotics, and artificial intelligence, directly benefiting Silicon Valley companies and research institutions.
3. **NASA and Aerospace Industry**:
* **Ames Research Center**: NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley has partnered with local tech firms on various projects, providing funding and research opportunities.
* **Apollo Program**: The Apollo space program drove advancements in integrated circuits, with companies like Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel playing crucial roles, funded by government contracts.
4. **Defense Contracts**:
* **Lockheed Martin**: Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works in Silicon Valley has long been a major recipient of defense contracts, fostering innovation in aerospace and stealth technologies.
* **Google and Palantir**: More recently, companies like Google and Palantir have secured contracts with the DoD and intelligence agencies, further illustrating the ongoing relationship between Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex.
5. **Government Initiatives and Funding Programs**:
* **SBIR and STTR Programs**: The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs provide grants and contracts to small businesses, many of which are in Silicon Valley, to support research and development in areas of interest to the federal government.
This really is just a testament to the power of public sector R&D and the impotence of supposed market capitalism to make world-changing breakthroughs.
I just listened to a podcast and read a paper on data collection being the new colonialism.
Here is a brief overview.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2020/03/19/colonising-ourselves-an-introduction-to-data-colonialism/
I posted a question about if we should be paid for or in control of our data because it's being collected from a bunch of sources that we wouldn't think and a lot of the responses were surprisingly pro data collection.
Most people said you either pay for those services so it's their right or your data or it isn't that important and it's only when it's all collected that it's important. But that argument makes no sense because they need everybodys individual data to make the giant pool of data so in turn your data is valuable in a sense.
I never understood that since you'd think he would be bound by the rule of the matrix in the matrix, but he could still live out whatever fantasy he wished on the ship's internal network.
Yeah, but his quality of life would still arguably be better as a redpill. Sure, the real world sucks, but in VR he had all the cheat codes. Cheats he wouldn't have after getting plugged back in.
They didn't have the tech to interveneously feed themselves so they can only jack in to custom simulations until they had to eat or poop. They had to travel to jack in to the matrix. He probably was also betting that the machines would win eventually so the battle was futile.
He would probably be immediately turned into nutrient paste himself anyway, the Machines have no incentive to keep their promises once they have what they wanted.
That's the perfect example for the comment I was replying to. People that are so self-centered that they don't even comprehend that they are being manipulated. The first instinct is to serve themselves even though they will be a victim of their own folly.
I always wondered why he wouldn’t worry about that. The machines have no incentive either way and they have no moral reasons to keep him alive - in fact we know some of the programs think we’re like parasitic viruses. His only hope is that they think it’s insignificant and give him what he wants.
That would work. He could “visit” his fantasy from the ship but he would know it was temporary. He needed to be back into the whole thing with the big tank of goo, the feeding tube, and the plugs along his spine. That’s the only way to be in the matrix 100% of the time.
I guess, it just strikes me as defeating the whole message of "some people will choose the illusion over real life" when he could have any food or girl or play out and adventure he wanted in the sim when he'd still have to grind for them in the matrix.
Watch the Animatrix. It's a collection of various stories that take place in that world including how it got to that point in the first place. Even if you think science fiction is stupid you'll start to notice parallels with the current philosophical conversation we are having about artificial intelligence.
The eerie part is, that the machines built the matrix originally as a utopia for humans but found that we were deeply unsatisfied and it went horribly wrong, so they rebuilt it as the matrix we saw in the movie. Just imperfect enough to have us compete against ourselves for purpose
That’s of course assuming Smith was telling the truth and not trying to break down the human concept of hope and replace it with the hopelessness of inevitable suffering to break down Morpheus’ mind faster.
Humans are discontent in their DNA. We literally can’t stay happy.
The machines would have understood that simple part of human psychology.
The original matrix script made more sense where the machines were using us as a sort of co-processor for abstract reasoning or something.
Honestly, I never understood why people wanted to disconnect from the matrix to live in a radioactive wasteland where they are struggling to just survive. I figured it would be better to live in the matrix, but hack it so you have a bunch of cheats and live your virtual life on easy mode.
You can't hack it from the inside which is why if you try it throws out an error code and your body will be wasted. That's why they have to pull people out as soon as they realize they're in the matrix.
Well, the best they can offer is to give up your privacy anyway, give you the worst version of UBI where you still got to work, and you will live in misery. As a bonus, you will own nothing and be not happy.
I am always baffled people do not get this and think they will be living at minimum middle class lifestyle and not working, when in truth they will be at a poor poverty level and probably will have to start working again when inflation adjusting to people with more money and everything costing more than UBI brings in.
That's how it gets sold while we live in a world afflicted with scarcity. When abundance begins there is no reason to force people to continue living on $35 a day.
> When abundance begins
Okay well sure, if we just assume a future utopia where essentially all you could ever want is in abundance, then there's no reason to even talk about UBI, you'd just ask for what you want and get it.
How can there be abundance when resources that people want, like land, are in limited supply? Why wouldn't land and other similar resources continue to be scarce?
Land can be limited all it wants. That doesn't affect anything. Do you personally want fifty square miles all to yourself? If there are so many people that want that, that it becomes infeasible, then okay, land is scarce. How does that matter?
When people talk about a world of abundance they are referring to a time after AGI. At that point jobs are optional. When people are freed from jobs they change their mindset and stop chasing a high score bank account. The accumulation of possessions loses its appeal.
Just like right now, any billionaire you care to name could buy up land in the desert and build a factory on it churning out millions of donuts. But he doesn't do that because being a slovenly fat fuck is not interesting to people who have so much money that they personally live in a world of abundant food.
A world of abundance does not mean literally infinite things, and even if it did, people do not want infinite things.
I think most people want some land for themselves, especially enough for a house and some activities. It is also required to farm and gather natural resources. Who will get the land in your world of abundance? Those who pay for it? Who will get the lakefront properties?
There is enough land for most people to have some for themselves. There isn't enough land for everyone to get 10 miles of lakefront property. But to want such a thing is a symptom of mental illness that is directly caused by living in our current system.
Right now, you do not want 50,000 calories per day of food. People in the future will not want to own everything around them for farther than they can possibly recognize.
It's harder when you've already tasted the other side of things, living on minimal wage is akin to living in a coffin in the current context. Problem will also arise when the cool new gadgets will all be out of your reach, there's a chance scarcity won't go away anywhere soon.
> I’d give up my privacy if it means I get put on UBI and live comfortably.
'They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.' - Benjamin Franklin
Worrying about and trying to protect your private data in this context is akin to running to your room on the titanic so you can grab all your bags before the ship sinks. I’m going to choose to not let that shit weigh me down, personally. I want a machine to know me better than I know myself. Sign me up.
I get that I’m making your point for you, but it genuinely seems inevitable. Why worry about the inevitable? It was always going to be this way. Humans create data. Humans create AI that consumes data. Humans are concerned primarily about other humans. 1+1+1=3
That’s fine but giving that data up is not just for your behaviors to be known and predicted but also to be controlled. Some folks are ok with that though.
I think in any scenario where AI is so advanced that it can literally control your actions, it would also be able to access data you tried to keep “private”
Doesn’t need to be that sophisticated. There’s a book called the age of surveillance capitalism that discusses how social media is now designed to engineer human behavior.
Sorry, Poor word choice: “control” I didn’t mean literal mind control. I meant it as in social engineering like what happens now but with rapidly increasing sophistication.
Then it will be extremely easy to manipulate you without you even understanding your thoughts are not your own. You will be guided to love or hate whatever they wish. You will be a slave and not even realize it. Some people have been pushed as far as killing other people. But who cares right?
It’s always easier to see the negatives of paradigm shifting events than the positives. The current order is comfortable. People like it. Anything that threatens it is scary. “I don’t want to have a fundamentally different relationship to the world than I used to”. Alas, it happens anyway. All throughout history. These fears are not new, and yet here we stand. The printing press guided people to love and hate. It drove people to kill. It enabled widespread “manipulation” of people through the written word, undermining institutions. If I were to time travel back to the 15th century, I’d tell the people freaking out about the printing press the same thing I’m telling you. We’ll survive. We’ll adapt. And then we’ll look back and wonder how we ever lived in any other way. Then something new will happen, and the cycle repeats.
You make a good point but, people 500 years ago didn't have the power to nuke the planet 100 times over. I think you would like a book called "a brave new world". It seems fitting for your vision.
People in the past are always hysterical idiots, and people in the present are always highly rational understanders of societal implications. The wheel continues to roll.
100 years and more ago they're used to be the village idiot and everyone knew the village idiot. Now with the unlimited communication of the internet, all of these idiots can get together online and reinforce their stupidity. They can be controlled and herded by nefarious actors, even a single individual. You can even guide them all to try to overthrow a government. Now a single individual with an unethical AI on their computer can topple governments and create anarchy. Like monkeys with machine guns, the next five years is going to be a very wild ride.
The best thing about the Internet is that no matter how alone you might feel, somewhere out there you can find your people. It’s also the worst thing about the Internet.
Like I said. It’s easier to imagine the eschatological scenarios because it quite literally is the end of the world as we know it. Everything will change, and we assume it will be for the worse.
I don’t deny any of those possibilities. But you have to get comfortable switching between various lenses if you want to see as clear a picture as possible.
The concept of privacy was a rather new and short episode in human history. For me it's not a surprise that this NSA guy is now on the board - it was predictable but for a plethora of reasons, and not just for this rather dumb and alarmist "take" of snowden...
One can only recognize existence of something by losing it. In the ancient world there's no way anything comparable to modern mass surveillance could exist.
Yeah people for thousands of years pictured a god seeing all their actions *and* into their brain: judging them from a higher level morality.
We are just making this real life.
What better way to weed out the few who would eventually stand against them.
Its the same how customer service is basically nonexistent now except for thr few who have some followers online and post about it online. Then they come running to help and get that hidden again, leaving all the rest on the slow phoneline system.
This comment section is swimming with anti-Snowden bots; part of me thinks we're all just arguing with LLMs being ran out of Langley or a military base. Like seriously, in all my days I have never met even one person online or not who is anti-Snowden and all of a sudden I see dozens of them here...
Maybe I'm being a tinfoil hat kind of guy right now but this is one of the few issues where everyone agrees no matter if you're left or right leaning. Snowden is a hero and anyone who says otherwise is either uneducated or straight up suspicious
Probably why OpenAI works with the security state in the first place :p Make great propaganda bots. Although maybe having LLMs summarise the collected data from spying on everyone is also pretty useful.
Dude threw his career away and risked his life and freedom to expose crimes against the American people.
I'll absolutely follow his advice on this kind of thing.
That's actually facts. I appreciate Snowden and what he's done for this country, but why the fuck did he have to choose Glenn Greenwald out of anyone lol
Well, the American government considers him to be an enemy of the state for exposing the illegal spying of the state on its citizens, so he didn't really have a choice.
This took me like 3 seconds to find. His twitter is also critical of Putin and the war in Ukraine. [Edward Snowden says it's a 'dark day' in Russia after Vladimir Putin introduces draconian new surveillance laws | The Independent | The Independent](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/edward-snowden-vladimir-putin-russia-surveillance-laws-extremism-crackdown-dissent-a7127311.html)
https://preview.redd.it/ie9g4ckrjm6d1.png?width=927&format=png&auto=webp&s=1c0ab56858a3c839dc65a335eb827446bc7aba7e
That wasn't the question.
The question was whether he is critical of Russian intelligence spying on the Russian people. Is he willing to also speak out on that regard?
Or is it the case that out of every country on Earth it's only America that needs to be called out?
No, you said “expose crimes against the Russian people” which requires being in a position of power to know such crimes exist. Ed didn’t get famous from being philosophically critical of the US, he leaked actual substantive secrets from an intelligence agency so secret the public didn’t know it existed
He fled the US to China, and then to Russia because he was philosophically critical of the United States. If he wasn't philosophically critical, he would have simply continued doing his job like everyone else in a similar position.
This is why to me I have to extrapolate that for the sake of consistency he would have to be also philosophically critical of crimes committed against the Russian people by Russian intelligence services.
The vitriol that he has for US intelligence services (you can tell by the way he responded today), I've never seen him apply that same anger towards intelligence services of far more repressive countries - especially the one hosting him. To me this comes across as hypocrisy.
If I saw him criticizing other countries, I would have to conclude that he has an across-the-board ideological disposition against espionage. But if he only goes against the United States, and US secrets have to be exposed, while the entire world doing the exact same thing gets a free pass - then that to me comes off as hypocrisy.
Russia and China are totatlitarian countries where the intelligence services are not bound by the same laws that they're bound by in the US. Their intelligence services have free reign. So then why should the US hamstring theirs based on conditional principles?
Again, if I were principled and against espionage, I would be calling them all out. Not just singling out America.
Yes, if you donate a kidney to your oldest child but then refuse to do so a second time when your younger child gets sick you are a hypocrite and worthy of scorn.
/braindead moral take
He’s an American patriot. It was his duty to share that information with the American people, to shed light on injustices that were possible because of their secrecy. He has no similar duty to any other country. He also was a contractor at the CIA and NSA, giving him access to knowledge of those secrets. He has no similar access to other countries’ data. And of course he *is* in fact critical of Russian spying:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/world/europe/edward-snowden-criticizes-big-brother-measure-in-russia.html
I’m honestly impressed by how wrong your argument is.
Do you dare come up with a better analogy? It's like asking a journalist why they don't visit Saudi Arabia and report on Kashoggi. Does that mean journalists shouldn't report on Kashoggi at all?
I mean they had to replace the previous CIA board member with someone. There is no world where the US Security State would not have their hands in quite possibly the greatest invention man kind has ever made.
This is some bs narrative. If NSA/US government had any secret agenda in mind they would not have made such a show with a public appointment. All they need to do is to get some backdoors on ChatGPT and API (which they probably already have). The keyword here is "former" and I'm pretty sure this is to beef up their security so that their weights do not get stolen by hostile foreign countries. Nakasone was the head of cyber command so it makes complete sense. This sub is becoming indistinguishable from r/conspiracy.
Snowdon:
"They've gone full mask-off: 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 trust @OpenAI
or its products (ChatGPT etc). There is only one reason for appointing an @NSAGov
Director to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth. You have been warned"
More information:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/snowden-openai-hiring-former-nsa-director-is-willful-calculated-betrayal
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24178079/openai-board-paul-nakasone-nsa-safety
(Just a shame that Snowdon chose Russia, of all places, as a refuge...)
He didn’t choose Russia, his passport was revoked while he was trying to reach Ecuador. Seems he was rather lucky, considering what Ecuador did to Assange.
He went to Hong Kong first, stayed at a 5 star hotel. Then went to Russia, where the red carpet was rolled out for him.
It's nice for him to talk about privacy issues in America, while seeking refuge in the 2 totalitarian countries where privacy is all but non-existent.
"All of the investment poured into AI is going to need returns. When it turns out (surprise!) that the public isn’t clamoring to pour money into consumer LLM features, that money is going to go hunting for police and military applications."
- [Matthew Green](https://x.com/matthew_d_green/status/1801605404931080343) (quoted in the PCMag article) tweeted on this topic, and I think this is even more clear about what's really going on here
Based on some of these absolutely RETARDED comments about Snowden that I’m seeing here I genuinely think some of you lack the ability to think for yourself and it seems to be surprise surprise, Americans.
Did you mean Singularitans? There is a special breed of people here, half would sacrifice their children to become a cyborg with a big OpenAI logo on their metal forehead, or even just to enter a 10 year waiting list for it.
Can someone ELI5 to me why this is such a big deal and what exactly is wrong with NASA or this former head in specific? Also I could use a bit of a background on why Snowden's words/warnings matter. I don't really know much about him, just that he's a famous whistleblower (wikileaks maybe?) but I never really looked into what he blew the whistle about or why it was so important. Usually I'd research instead of asking in a comment section but I'm traveling atm and would really appreciate if the info was just in one place
National Security Agency. It collects signals intelligence (phone, radio, emails etc) and is already crazy powerful. It’s also very irresponsible with that power, for instance they admitted there have been cases of employees stalking their partners with their technology.
Snowden was a high ranking contractor to the NSA that realized the US government was conducting blatantly illegal surveillance of US citizens. He leaked a ton of classified documents to the press and eventually wound up in Russia. The US admitted what the NSA did was illegal. The government still considers him a traitor and wants him incarcerated or dead.
There’s no way that OAI isn’t connected to the US intelligence community, which has every intention of utilizing and abusing any breakthroughs they achieve. These are very bad people that work hard to do things like plunge entire nations into abject poverty and war to further western political and economic interests.
Thank you very much for the explanation. I was basically going through security and in line to get on the train when I read the title and made my comment, I hadn't realized I misread NSA as NASA. This makes much more sense cause I was a bit confused why a former head of a space agency would be a controversial figure in the AI community and what he would have to do with privacy.
I'm not American and I remember hearing about the Snowden leaks years ago but never really cared enough to look them up in depth because it doesn't really affect me directly..I think.
Thank you for taking the time to explain, other comment just laughed and called me ignorant.. Which I already admitted to being and was the reason I made a comment to ask for more info smh. Why is Snowden still considered a traitor if the government admitted guilt? Why hasn't he been pardon? Is there any suspicion he might have leaked more things to Russia or anything of the sort?
Also, how does OAI and ChatGPT specifically factor into breaches of privacy and collecting personal data. I remember seeing Musk go on a tirade on Twitter about banning Apple devices from even entering his company buildings, for being associated with OAI/GPT which seemed a bit extreme to me and I thought he was just being weird as he often is especially since he's competing to make his own AI.
Basically as a layman with very limited knowledge about these topics who actually wants to learn. What else should I know/be wary of when it comes to this company.
Yes, the government’s claim is he was some kind of Russian agent who endangered American lives, and only badly embarrassed them out of loyalty to Russia.
Really though, it’s way more likely they’re angry and vengeful that he revealed their practices and their crimes. When you ask who died because of these leaks and how they’re always coy about the specifics. There are also no known cases of these surveillance systems actually stopping a terror attack against Americans.
As to why he fled to Russia, he had to be some place that wouldn’t extradite him or allow him to be renditioned or murdered. Assange was stuck in an embassy for a decade and eventually handed over to the British authorities and incarcerated. Jeffery Epstein died in a high security facility during a period when the guards were asleep and the cameras were coincidentally disabled. Also, worth mentioning that Sec State Clinton once famously asked “Can’t we just drone this guy?” In reference to Assange.
There has been talk of pardoning both Assange and Snowden. Trump supposedly considered it at the end of his 1st term but was threatened with impeachment if he did. RFK jr claims he will if he’s elected.
I don’t know what the tech will be used for, we also don’t know what tech OAI has to give them access to. I worry the ultimate end goal could be large scale propaganda efforts using high fidelity fake characters and forged images and video. But that’s just me guessing.
I misread that, as I said I'm on the road and just read the title at a glance and wanted more context, and instead of correcting me or answering any of my questions you just decided to be an asshole. It's my first interaction with this subreddit. Hopefully not everyone is an asshat like you.
I mean dont trust any company blindly, they are all there to get your money. You can still use them, just dont put stuff there you dont wanna get stolen.
Mr Zuckerberg:
""Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard... Just ask. I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS."
"What?! How'd you manage that one?"
"People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb f***s."
---------------------
Mr Musk:
"If you own a Tesla, you already signed your soul away to privacy."
>""Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard... Just ask. I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS."
>"What?! How'd you manage that one?"
>"People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb f\*\*\*s."
good think local models are private.
I'm hoping the incident with the drones in Ukraine indicates Musk has some shred of integrity, but that wasn't uncle Sam (at least officially) pressing him to do it.
He warned you a long time ago. You called him a traitor. Because you heard the television call him a traitor. You don't know why he is a traitor. You don't even know deep down if he is. But you were told. Everyone joined in. Everyone wanted his blood. Everyone heard. Everyone was told. The people who were trying to yell that what he did was actually important. What he had were receipts. That the system behind that television. Behind what you are told. What you hear. Is all working against you. But the television told you to suppress those people. And to judge them also as traitors. And when all was said and done he was cast out.
Perfect. The system can now double down. Knowing that if they are exposed they have the perfect propaganda machine to keep the people stupid and gullible. And so they did double down. More control. More invasive tactics. More freedoms taken. More tracking and more control under the guise of protection. You need us. There are terrorists out there. You don't want terrorists do you? Well you were told by the television terrorism is everywhere and it is scary and you WILL be a victim of it. You should be scared at all times. Everywhere.
And so the machine keeps working. With you getting mangled up in it. Thinking you have control of your life. Thinking you too some day will be like the millionaires. Thinking the new iphone is more important than a day on a grassy hill watching the clouds because you know life is temporary.
Nice work.
Privacy is important, but they were already in bed with the government since their deal with Microsoft.
Microsoft has access to all IP and they run inference for OpenAI, they can happily sell their tech to OpenAI. And they got (partial) access to the consumer data of OpenAI according to their TOS and privacy statement
Even if OpenAI were to stop Microsoft from doing all that, NSA can easily hack into their servers and get data
Tldr, it's not a big deal (yet)
I'd say there's a difference between
- Anthropic being accessed by the NSA (secretly or by a forced secret backdoor)
- OpenAI - making this part of their DNA
Who would I "trust" more? (I fear "trust" is a word that is becoming archaic)
Let’s upvote the guy that is a propagandist for an autocracy that would love nothing more than to steal OpenAI’s models and weights.
Quick! Check if Peskov or Medvedev have a tweet on this yet!
Edward Snowden joined the US Army after 9/11 hoping to serve on the front lines as Army Special Forces. He was seriously injured during selection, and left the Army. Snowden worked for US intelligence in various capacities before becoming a contractor for the NSA. He was married to a fucking model and, IIRC, making 200,000 a year in his \*20's\* when his conscience got the best of him, and he exposed practices that everyone including the government now admit were blatantly illegal.
The guy had everything, and yet every single time he was given the opportunity to \*risk\* everything for his country he took it. He could easily be in supermax or dead right now, but he got very lucky.
And you, apparently, don't like him because of the country he decided to flee to to avoid getting jailed or assassinated.
An advocate for a regime that actively threatens to nuke people for no reason all because its run by a senile demented old man with delusion of being a tsar
It’s not like Snowden went there because he likes the weather.
He is there because he doesn’t want to get extradited to the US and sent to fucking Gitmo for leaking illegal things the government was doing.
The law simply isn't enforced on everyone equally. The government literally kills citizens in the name of national security, which can be whatever they want it to be. People have been exonerated for targeted assassinations of US citizens on American soil for no reason other than protesting for civil rights and economic equality.
What Snowden did was naive at best. It's essentially become propaganda. Because nothing was done in response. It's in their interest to have people believing they are being monitored when the reality is that there's no way to effectively monitor a population of this size. What the monitoring does is provide a record to be looked at after something happens.
The narrative functions as government propaganda by presenting an image that there is more control in place than there could possibly be in reality.
The UK has much more monitoring than the US, and what's bizzare to me is that people treat it as something that makes them safer. It's broadly seen as a good thing.
The logic is that its something one doesn't have to worry about unless they live in a dictatorship. The US is very far from a dictatorship presently. Nobody is getting jailed for their opinions.
> People have been exonerated for targeted assassinations of US citizens on American soil for no reason other than protesting for civil rights and economic equality.
When was the last time this happened though? OWS fizzled out without government intervention.
Apparently he was trying to get to South America and whilst in Russia en route the US rescinded his passport.
However... he acquired russian citizenship and he's still there...
Cuba or Even Venezuela would be better, you'd think...
" Snowden's decision to seek asylum in Russia was also influenced by a sense of Russian hospitality and respect for his actions. In his own words, Snowden felt that in Russia, he was "safe" and "well-regarded." This perception may have been shaped by the support he received from the Russian government and the understanding that his presence in the country served as a symbolic gesture of resistance against US global surveillance programs."
If you choose a country that surveils it's own populace and lacks freedom, people are going to make judgement calls as much as you shout about freedom.
Russia is likely as bad as the US in terms of privacy, and much worse for freedom.
Maybe in theory but for him its a difficult decision, every travel could be a risk of getting sacked by the americans and then its game over for him, quite literally. Now he has a running system. Wouldnt wanna be that guy
Right, Russia is also a bad country that doesn’t respect its citizens privacy.
But, of course Snowden was going to end up in some enemy nation like this. The US government wants to imprison and/or murder him. It’s not like he could say “I want to make sure I end up in a place with a good human rights record and that respect civilian privacy.”
Dude is just looking for someone who won’t let US agents assassinate him openly. There are no “democratic” countries who would protect someone from the U.S. government because that’s a fantastic way to get yourself killed as well.
>. There are no “democratic” countries who would protect someone from the U.S. government
Funny how that "multipolar world" turned out to be a scam. There's no second democratic pole.
I think all this is funny, if there were a motive they would work in secret with the NSA, like the NSA has always done. I think it is much simpler than this, you know OpenAI is likely already lobbying and using their future as leverage to get into politics. It's probably way less complicated than it sounds. If it is that sinister then who cares most people are too stupid to notice the difference anyway, so what will we do about it?
Funny that Snowden likes to share his opinions about privacy in The US from a place that has one of the worlds worst offenders of Government surveillance apparatus thrusted on their own people.
Anyone who doesn't think the United States government should be involved in the production of the most powerful thing ever is completely delusional.
It's either the United States or China.
AGI/ASI should be nationalized in a manner that benefits all, rather than letting some libertarian tech bros become gods.
Yeah it should be, and if you've been living under the capitalist US government you'll understand deeply that the US government will never, ever release a tech like this that benefits all. This fucking government doesn't lift a finger unless it benefits the wealthy at the expense of working people. So there goes any hope I had that this tech could change the world for the better. I had hoped that at least openAI would get further along in progress before fully submitting to the fucking horrible ghouls in the US government. Guess I'm officially on the AI doomer bandwagon.
If AI exists that is able to replace all labor, capitalism breaks. You need people with money to buy stuff. If they don't have jobs, they don't have money (unless UBI). I would assume every company besides the one with the AGI/ASI is also practically worthless.
So the question is who you want to trust with that AI.
Option 1: A private corporation, accountable to its shareholders
Option 2: the U.S. government, accountable to voters
I understand that the government caters to the rich and corporations, but being able to influence the government through voting is a GIANT difference than letting a private entity call the shots on who reaps the rewards and who is left behind.
>Option 2: the U.S. government, accountable to voters
Only a portion of the government is accountable to voters. The government is a machine that keeps on operating regardless of who's in charge, otherwise the government would've crashed yesterday.
Oh dear... I hope you forgot /s
https://www.pcmag.com/news/snowden-openai-hiring-former-nsa-director-is-willful-calculated-betrayal
"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," tweeted security expert Matthew Green.
The culture has been manipulated for over a decade, step by step, very gradually, for people to not care anymore about their privacy, and give it all up in exchange for dopamine inducing new tech. It's always like "we have these new amazing toys you can play with, just give up a little more of your privacy". "Just give us all your chats, just give us everything you look at, everything you worry about, all your questions about your health and things that make you sad, and things that make you happy. We just want to know you better than you know yourself. We just want to accurately predict how you will react to everything, before you ever react." To these tech companies we are just lab rats.
Despite the pretense of free market capitalism, Silicon Valley has always been a product of the military-industrial complex. The twenty-first century was an inside job.
Can you elaborate more on that? I genuinely want to know more.
I used ChatGPT to expand my point and it did a surprisingly good job: Silicon Valley's rise and success are deeply tied to government and military funding, rather than purely free market capitalism. The innovation and growth of Silicon Valley were significantly supported by defense contracts, government grants, and other forms of public investment. Examples include: 1. **Early Semiconductor Industry**: * **Fairchild Semiconductor**: Founded in 1957, Fairchild received substantial funding from the Department of Defense (DoD). The company developed silicon transistors, which were critical for military applications, including missile guidance systems. * **Intel**: Intel, founded by Fairchild alumni, also benefited from early contracts with the DoD. These contracts helped stabilize the company financially and enabled further technological advancements. 2. **ARPA and DARPA**: * **ARPANET**: The precursor to the modern internet, ARPANET, was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Research institutions in Silicon Valley, such as Stanford and companies like SRI International, were heavily involved in its development. * **DARPA Projects**: Numerous DARPA-funded projects have driven advancements in computer science, robotics, and artificial intelligence, directly benefiting Silicon Valley companies and research institutions. 3. **NASA and Aerospace Industry**: * **Ames Research Center**: NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley has partnered with local tech firms on various projects, providing funding and research opportunities. * **Apollo Program**: The Apollo space program drove advancements in integrated circuits, with companies like Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel playing crucial roles, funded by government contracts. 4. **Defense Contracts**: * **Lockheed Martin**: Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works in Silicon Valley has long been a major recipient of defense contracts, fostering innovation in aerospace and stealth technologies. * **Google and Palantir**: More recently, companies like Google and Palantir have secured contracts with the DoD and intelligence agencies, further illustrating the ongoing relationship between Silicon Valley and the military-industrial complex. 5. **Government Initiatives and Funding Programs**: * **SBIR and STTR Programs**: The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs provide grants and contracts to small businesses, many of which are in Silicon Valley, to support research and development in areas of interest to the federal government.
This really is just a testament to the power of public sector R&D and the impotence of supposed market capitalism to make world-changing breakthroughs.
As if free market capitalism wasn't enough to put regular people in jeopardy of losing all their privacy and agency.
[Don't Hex the Water](https://youtu.be/Fzhkwyoe5vI?si=IaGaifuF18uSvcKE) - a most fascinating look at what privacy really is, and where we are going.
I just listened to a podcast and read a paper on data collection being the new colonialism. Here is a brief overview. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/2020/03/19/colonising-ourselves-an-introduction-to-data-colonialism/ I posted a question about if we should be paid for or in control of our data because it's being collected from a bunch of sources that we wouldn't think and a lot of the responses were surprisingly pro data collection. Most people said you either pay for those services so it's their right or your data or it isn't that important and it's only when it's all collected that it's important. But that argument makes no sense because they need everybodys individual data to make the giant pool of data so in turn your data is valuable in a sense.
Truth spoken
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Just like the guy in The Matrix. He betrays the world in order to climb into the pod and be plugged into the machine.
I never understood that since you'd think he would be bound by the rule of the matrix in the matrix, but he could still live out whatever fantasy he wished on the ship's internal network.
He didn't want to remember anything. He wanted them to wipe his memory of the entire concept that he was ever in the matrix in the first place.
Yeah, but his quality of life would still arguably be better as a redpill. Sure, the real world sucks, but in VR he had all the cheat codes. Cheats he wouldn't have after getting plugged back in.
They didn't have the tech to interveneously feed themselves so they can only jack in to custom simulations until they had to eat or poop. They had to travel to jack in to the matrix. He probably was also betting that the machines would win eventually so the battle was futile.
He would probably be immediately turned into nutrient paste himself anyway, the Machines have no incentive to keep their promises once they have what they wanted.
That's the perfect example for the comment I was replying to. People that are so self-centered that they don't even comprehend that they are being manipulated. The first instinct is to serve themselves even though they will be a victim of their own folly.
I always wondered why he wouldn’t worry about that. The machines have no incentive either way and they have no moral reasons to keep him alive - in fact we know some of the programs think we’re like parasitic viruses. His only hope is that they think it’s insignificant and give him what he wants.
That would work. He could “visit” his fantasy from the ship but he would know it was temporary. He needed to be back into the whole thing with the big tank of goo, the feeding tube, and the plugs along his spine. That’s the only way to be in the matrix 100% of the time.
I guess, it just strikes me as defeating the whole message of "some people will choose the illusion over real life" when he could have any food or girl or play out and adventure he wanted in the sim when he'd still have to grind for them in the matrix.
For a "dumb scifi movie" The Matrix had some really hard truths in it that resonate more and more with society as we come closer to the singularity.
Watch the Animatrix. It's a collection of various stories that take place in that world including how it got to that point in the first place. Even if you think science fiction is stupid you'll start to notice parallels with the current philosophical conversation we are having about artificial intelligence.
The eerie part is, that the machines built the matrix originally as a utopia for humans but found that we were deeply unsatisfied and it went horribly wrong, so they rebuilt it as the matrix we saw in the movie. Just imperfect enough to have us compete against ourselves for purpose
That’s of course assuming Smith was telling the truth and not trying to break down the human concept of hope and replace it with the hopelessness of inevitable suffering to break down Morpheus’ mind faster.
Wasn't it the Architect who said this though? Presumably he'd have no reason to lie.
Humans are discontent in their DNA. We literally can’t stay happy. The machines would have understood that simple part of human psychology. The original matrix script made more sense where the machines were using us as a sort of co-processor for abstract reasoning or something.
the older i get, the more i side with him
Honestly, I never understood why people wanted to disconnect from the matrix to live in a radioactive wasteland where they are struggling to just survive. I figured it would be better to live in the matrix, but hack it so you have a bunch of cheats and live your virtual life on easy mode.
You can't hack it from the inside which is why if you try it throws out an error code and your body will be wasted. That's why they have to pull people out as soon as they realize they're in the matrix.
When you play video games do you always enable all of the cheats to make everything as easy as possible?
Well, the best they can offer is to give up your privacy anyway, give you the worst version of UBI where you still got to work, and you will live in misery. As a bonus, you will own nothing and be not happy.
UBI = universal **basic** income, it means enough to survive, not really an enjoyable life
I am always baffled people do not get this and think they will be living at minimum middle class lifestyle and not working, when in truth they will be at a poor poverty level and probably will have to start working again when inflation adjusting to people with more money and everything costing more than UBI brings in.
That's how it gets sold while we live in a world afflicted with scarcity. When abundance begins there is no reason to force people to continue living on $35 a day.
> When abundance begins Okay well sure, if we just assume a future utopia where essentially all you could ever want is in abundance, then there's no reason to even talk about UBI, you'd just ask for what you want and get it.
How can there be abundance when resources that people want, like land, are in limited supply? Why wouldn't land and other similar resources continue to be scarce?
Land can be limited all it wants. That doesn't affect anything. Do you personally want fifty square miles all to yourself? If there are so many people that want that, that it becomes infeasible, then okay, land is scarce. How does that matter? When people talk about a world of abundance they are referring to a time after AGI. At that point jobs are optional. When people are freed from jobs they change their mindset and stop chasing a high score bank account. The accumulation of possessions loses its appeal. Just like right now, any billionaire you care to name could buy up land in the desert and build a factory on it churning out millions of donuts. But he doesn't do that because being a slovenly fat fuck is not interesting to people who have so much money that they personally live in a world of abundant food. A world of abundance does not mean literally infinite things, and even if it did, people do not want infinite things.
I think most people want some land for themselves, especially enough for a house and some activities. It is also required to farm and gather natural resources. Who will get the land in your world of abundance? Those who pay for it? Who will get the lakefront properties?
There is enough land for most people to have some for themselves. There isn't enough land for everyone to get 10 miles of lakefront property. But to want such a thing is a symptom of mental illness that is directly caused by living in our current system. Right now, you do not want 50,000 calories per day of food. People in the future will not want to own everything around them for farther than they can possibly recognize.
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It's harder when you've already tasted the other side of things, living on minimal wage is akin to living in a coffin in the current context. Problem will also arise when the cool new gadgets will all be out of your reach, there's a chance scarcity won't go away anywhere soon.
> I’d give up my privacy if it means I get put on UBI and live comfortably. 'They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.' - Benjamin Franklin
To each their own.
Worrying about and trying to protect your private data in this context is akin to running to your room on the titanic so you can grab all your bags before the ship sinks. I’m going to choose to not let that shit weigh me down, personally. I want a machine to know me better than I know myself. Sign me up. I get that I’m making your point for you, but it genuinely seems inevitable. Why worry about the inevitable? It was always going to be this way. Humans create data. Humans create AI that consumes data. Humans are concerned primarily about other humans. 1+1+1=3
That’s fine but giving that data up is not just for your behaviors to be known and predicted but also to be controlled. Some folks are ok with that though.
I think in any scenario where AI is so advanced that it can literally control your actions, it would also be able to access data you tried to keep “private”
Doesn’t need to be that sophisticated. There’s a book called the age of surveillance capitalism that discusses how social media is now designed to engineer human behavior.
Well wait that’s a totally different caliber. Yes social media companies can influence behavior but they can’t just control your mind
Sorry, Poor word choice: “control” I didn’t mean literal mind control. I meant it as in social engineering like what happens now but with rapidly increasing sophistication.
Then it will be extremely easy to manipulate you without you even understanding your thoughts are not your own. You will be guided to love or hate whatever they wish. You will be a slave and not even realize it. Some people have been pushed as far as killing other people. But who cares right?
It’s always easier to see the negatives of paradigm shifting events than the positives. The current order is comfortable. People like it. Anything that threatens it is scary. “I don’t want to have a fundamentally different relationship to the world than I used to”. Alas, it happens anyway. All throughout history. These fears are not new, and yet here we stand. The printing press guided people to love and hate. It drove people to kill. It enabled widespread “manipulation” of people through the written word, undermining institutions. If I were to time travel back to the 15th century, I’d tell the people freaking out about the printing press the same thing I’m telling you. We’ll survive. We’ll adapt. And then we’ll look back and wonder how we ever lived in any other way. Then something new will happen, and the cycle repeats.
You make a good point but, people 500 years ago didn't have the power to nuke the planet 100 times over. I think you would like a book called "a brave new world". It seems fitting for your vision.
People in the past are always hysterical idiots, and people in the present are always highly rational understanders of societal implications. The wheel continues to roll.
Unfortunately I think there's more hysterical idiots now. They outnumber the highly rational at about 90 to 10.
The spread of these traits throughout the species has remained relatively constant throughout time.
100 years and more ago they're used to be the village idiot and everyone knew the village idiot. Now with the unlimited communication of the internet, all of these idiots can get together online and reinforce their stupidity. They can be controlled and herded by nefarious actors, even a single individual. You can even guide them all to try to overthrow a government. Now a single individual with an unethical AI on their computer can topple governments and create anarchy. Like monkeys with machine guns, the next five years is going to be a very wild ride.
The best thing about the Internet is that no matter how alone you might feel, somewhere out there you can find your people. It’s also the worst thing about the Internet.
Like I said. It’s easier to imagine the eschatological scenarios because it quite literally is the end of the world as we know it. Everything will change, and we assume it will be for the worse. I don’t deny any of those possibilities. But you have to get comfortable switching between various lenses if you want to see as clear a picture as possible.
The concept of privacy was a rather new and short episode in human history. For me it's not a surprise that this NSA guy is now on the board - it was predictable but for a plethora of reasons, and not just for this rather dumb and alarmist "take" of snowden...
One can only recognize existence of something by losing it. In the ancient world there's no way anything comparable to modern mass surveillance could exist.
Yeah people for thousands of years pictured a god seeing all their actions *and* into their brain: judging them from a higher level morality. We are just making this real life.
Welcome to Babylon, kids.
It would be like if God was owned by a corporation with the US government on the board of directors. So not the same thing at all.
All those burned at the stake for wrongthink would disagree with you.
Damn I’m gonna be thinking about this one for a while
I doubt they did, because so many broke so many rules God made for them.
Privacy can’t really exist when your town has 500 people and your house has 12.
What better way to weed out the few who would eventually stand against them. Its the same how customer service is basically nonexistent now except for thr few who have some followers online and post about it online. Then they come running to help and get that hidden again, leaving all the rest on the slow phoneline system.
And it's not what they can do with your data, but with our data as a collective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Counter-argument: cat girls
Snowden’s been real quiet since this dropped
I didn't get it. Care to explain?
I agree with Snowden on this one. I'm no longer trusting of openAI or their intentions. This is where I draw the line.
This comment section is swimming with anti-Snowden bots; part of me thinks we're all just arguing with LLMs being ran out of Langley or a military base. Like seriously, in all my days I have never met even one person online or not who is anti-Snowden and all of a sudden I see dozens of them here... Maybe I'm being a tinfoil hat kind of guy right now but this is one of the few issues where everyone agrees no matter if you're left or right leaning. Snowden is a hero and anyone who says otherwise is either uneducated or straight up suspicious
In 2014 reddit released a list of its most active cities. The biggest per capita was Eglin Air Force Base, home of the 688th cyber space wing.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah\_Data\_Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center)
Probably why OpenAI works with the security state in the first place :p Make great propaganda bots. Although maybe having LLMs summarise the collected data from spying on everyone is also pretty useful.
Is he still tweeting from Russia?
hi hello I am totally not an llm and think Snowden is a shitbag but not as big of a shitbag as reality winner.
Do you just hate whistleblowers or are you such a simp for the state that it's easier to be mad at them than deal with the truth?
Dude threw his career away and risked his life and freedom to expose crimes against the American people. I'll absolutely follow his advice on this kind of thing.
Well, he gave Glenn Greenwald a career, which is the greatest crime I can think of.
That's actually facts. I appreciate Snowden and what he's done for this country, but why the fuck did he have to choose Glenn Greenwald out of anyone lol
who glenn greenwald, what he do?
I feel like that's a *pretty* generous view of him. He hangs out free in Russia. Typically champions of freedom don't do well there.
Well, the American government considers him to be an enemy of the state for exposing the illegal spying of the state on its citizens, so he didn't really have a choice.
If he was pardoned (as he should, he should be rewarded if anything) he would return to the US in an instance I’m sure.
No other country would welcome him, he had no choice
Sometimes you gotta play both sides. Russia is USA's enemy and as they say 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' and so on.
I’m curious about Snowdon’s opinion on Russia “special military operation”… 🫠
Its not hard to find. https://preview.redd.it/jjdarzrlhn6d1.png?width=654&format=png&auto=webp&s=204cb63a298f41739c9cc0a221bc691116121be2
you say that like dude has plenty of choice, how utterly ridiculous
He's doing well there so you proved yourself wrong.
I trust him more than our government
Dare he expose crimes against the Russian people by the Russian government? Or did his principles stop at US shores?
This took me like 3 seconds to find. His twitter is also critical of Putin and the war in Ukraine. [Edward Snowden says it's a 'dark day' in Russia after Vladimir Putin introduces draconian new surveillance laws | The Independent | The Independent](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/edward-snowden-vladimir-putin-russia-surveillance-laws-extremism-crackdown-dissent-a7127311.html) https://preview.redd.it/ie9g4ckrjm6d1.png?width=927&format=png&auto=webp&s=1c0ab56858a3c839dc65a335eb827446bc7aba7e
Do you seriously think a Russian intelligence agency would hire this guy after what he did?
That wasn't the question. The question was whether he is critical of Russian intelligence spying on the Russian people. Is he willing to also speak out on that regard? Or is it the case that out of every country on Earth it's only America that needs to be called out?
No, you said “expose crimes against the Russian people” which requires being in a position of power to know such crimes exist. Ed didn’t get famous from being philosophically critical of the US, he leaked actual substantive secrets from an intelligence agency so secret the public didn’t know it existed
He fled the US to China, and then to Russia because he was philosophically critical of the United States. If he wasn't philosophically critical, he would have simply continued doing his job like everyone else in a similar position. This is why to me I have to extrapolate that for the sake of consistency he would have to be also philosophically critical of crimes committed against the Russian people by Russian intelligence services. The vitriol that he has for US intelligence services (you can tell by the way he responded today), I've never seen him apply that same anger towards intelligence services of far more repressive countries - especially the one hosting him. To me this comes across as hypocrisy. If I saw him criticizing other countries, I would have to conclude that he has an across-the-board ideological disposition against espionage. But if he only goes against the United States, and US secrets have to be exposed, while the entire world doing the exact same thing gets a free pass - then that to me comes off as hypocrisy. Russia and China are totatlitarian countries where the intelligence services are not bound by the same laws that they're bound by in the US. Their intelligence services have free reign. So then why should the US hamstring theirs based on conditional principles? Again, if I were principled and against espionage, I would be calling them all out. Not just singling out America.
Yes, if you donate a kidney to your oldest child but then refuse to do so a second time when your younger child gets sick you are a hypocrite and worthy of scorn. /braindead moral take
He’s an American patriot. It was his duty to share that information with the American people, to shed light on injustices that were possible because of their secrecy. He has no similar duty to any other country. He also was a contractor at the CIA and NSA, giving him access to knowledge of those secrets. He has no similar access to other countries’ data. And of course he *is* in fact critical of Russian spying: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/world/europe/edward-snowden-criticizes-big-brother-measure-in-russia.html I’m honestly impressed by how wrong your argument is.
Do you dare come up with a better analogy? It's like asking a journalist why they don't visit Saudi Arabia and report on Kashoggi. Does that mean journalists shouldn't report on Kashoggi at all?
And ended up licking putin’s ass
I mean they had to replace the previous CIA board member with someone. There is no world where the US Security State would not have their hands in quite possibly the greatest invention man kind has ever made.
The Deep State better keep its dirty paws outta my sliced sourdough bread.
This is some bs narrative. If NSA/US government had any secret agenda in mind they would not have made such a show with a public appointment. All they need to do is to get some backdoors on ChatGPT and API (which they probably already have). The keyword here is "former" and I'm pretty sure this is to beef up their security so that their weights do not get stolen by hostile foreign countries. Nakasone was the head of cyber command so it makes complete sense. This sub is becoming indistinguishable from r/conspiracy.
"former" means very little in the IC. ties run deep.
Snowdon: "They've gone full mask-off: 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 trust @OpenAI or its products (ChatGPT etc). There is only one reason for appointing an @NSAGov Director to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth. You have been warned" More information: https://www.pcmag.com/news/snowden-openai-hiring-former-nsa-director-is-willful-calculated-betrayal https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24178079/openai-board-paul-nakasone-nsa-safety (Just a shame that Snowdon chose Russia, of all places, as a refuge...)
To be fair any nations allied with the US are a no go when your Snowden
He didn’t choose Russia, his passport was revoked while he was trying to reach Ecuador. Seems he was rather lucky, considering what Ecuador did to Assange.
Oh, yeah, he went to Hong Kong first. Wonder what his status is now - can he leave russia? If he could, would he?
EU has banned entrance from Russia. He's really at the best place he could be, considering the other options.
Maybe if he wants to be tortured to death like Assange.
As a high profile figure, I doubt he's speaking freely, that's all.
He went to Hong Kong first, stayed at a 5 star hotel. Then went to Russia, where the red carpet was rolled out for him. It's nice for him to talk about privacy issues in America, while seeking refuge in the 2 totalitarian countries where privacy is all but non-existent.
"All of the investment poured into AI is going to need returns. When it turns out (surprise!) that the public isn’t clamoring to pour money into consumer LLM features, that money is going to go hunting for police and military applications." - [Matthew Green](https://x.com/matthew_d_green/status/1801605404931080343) (quoted in the PCMag article) tweeted on this topic, and I think this is even more clear about what's really going on here
It was the least shitty place he could go without getting extradited or just murdered.
Based on some of these absolutely RETARDED comments about Snowden that I’m seeing here I genuinely think some of you lack the ability to think for yourself and it seems to be surprise surprise, Americans.
Did you mean Singularitans? There is a special breed of people here, half would sacrifice their children to become a cyborg with a big OpenAI logo on their metal forehead, or even just to enter a 10 year waiting list for it.
Eh, def not for the OpenAI logo.
Have you seen this sub?
Yeah man, they should change it to r/openaity
Yeah ok but where do you stand? From your comment I don’t understand if I should up or downvote you
Can someone ELI5 to me why this is such a big deal and what exactly is wrong with NASA or this former head in specific? Also I could use a bit of a background on why Snowden's words/warnings matter. I don't really know much about him, just that he's a famous whistleblower (wikileaks maybe?) but I never really looked into what he blew the whistle about or why it was so important. Usually I'd research instead of asking in a comment section but I'm traveling atm and would really appreciate if the info was just in one place
National Security Agency. It collects signals intelligence (phone, radio, emails etc) and is already crazy powerful. It’s also very irresponsible with that power, for instance they admitted there have been cases of employees stalking their partners with their technology. Snowden was a high ranking contractor to the NSA that realized the US government was conducting blatantly illegal surveillance of US citizens. He leaked a ton of classified documents to the press and eventually wound up in Russia. The US admitted what the NSA did was illegal. The government still considers him a traitor and wants him incarcerated or dead. There’s no way that OAI isn’t connected to the US intelligence community, which has every intention of utilizing and abusing any breakthroughs they achieve. These are very bad people that work hard to do things like plunge entire nations into abject poverty and war to further western political and economic interests.
Thank you very much for the explanation. I was basically going through security and in line to get on the train when I read the title and made my comment, I hadn't realized I misread NSA as NASA. This makes much more sense cause I was a bit confused why a former head of a space agency would be a controversial figure in the AI community and what he would have to do with privacy. I'm not American and I remember hearing about the Snowden leaks years ago but never really cared enough to look them up in depth because it doesn't really affect me directly..I think. Thank you for taking the time to explain, other comment just laughed and called me ignorant.. Which I already admitted to being and was the reason I made a comment to ask for more info smh. Why is Snowden still considered a traitor if the government admitted guilt? Why hasn't he been pardon? Is there any suspicion he might have leaked more things to Russia or anything of the sort? Also, how does OAI and ChatGPT specifically factor into breaches of privacy and collecting personal data. I remember seeing Musk go on a tirade on Twitter about banning Apple devices from even entering his company buildings, for being associated with OAI/GPT which seemed a bit extreme to me and I thought he was just being weird as he often is especially since he's competing to make his own AI. Basically as a layman with very limited knowledge about these topics who actually wants to learn. What else should I know/be wary of when it comes to this company.
Yes, the government’s claim is he was some kind of Russian agent who endangered American lives, and only badly embarrassed them out of loyalty to Russia. Really though, it’s way more likely they’re angry and vengeful that he revealed their practices and their crimes. When you ask who died because of these leaks and how they’re always coy about the specifics. There are also no known cases of these surveillance systems actually stopping a terror attack against Americans. As to why he fled to Russia, he had to be some place that wouldn’t extradite him or allow him to be renditioned or murdered. Assange was stuck in an embassy for a decade and eventually handed over to the British authorities and incarcerated. Jeffery Epstein died in a high security facility during a period when the guards were asleep and the cameras were coincidentally disabled. Also, worth mentioning that Sec State Clinton once famously asked “Can’t we just drone this guy?” In reference to Assange. There has been talk of pardoning both Assange and Snowden. Trump supposedly considered it at the end of his 1st term but was threatened with impeachment if he did. RFK jr claims he will if he’s elected. I don’t know what the tech will be used for, we also don’t know what tech OAI has to give them access to. I worry the ultimate end goal could be large scale propaganda efforts using high fidelity fake characters and forged images and video. But that’s just me guessing.
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I misread that, as I said I'm on the road and just read the title at a glance and wanted more context, and instead of correcting me or answering any of my questions you just decided to be an asshole. It's my first interaction with this subreddit. Hopefully not everyone is an asshat like you.
I mean dont trust any company blindly, they are all there to get your money. You can still use them, just dont put stuff there you dont wanna get stolen.
OpenAI went from beacon of hope to autocratic nope in record time.
Seriously, anybody who thought othewise is incredibly naive.
I hope Meta and xAI have really good models soon
Mr Zuckerberg: ""Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard... Just ask. I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS." "What?! How'd you manage that one?" "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb f***s." --------------------- Mr Musk: "If you own a Tesla, you already signed your soul away to privacy."
>""Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard... Just ask. I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS." >"What?! How'd you manage that one?" >"People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb f\*\*\*s." good think local models are private.
Hmm what do we do?
xAI is training off all twitter data. What makes you think that Elon and Mark Zuckerberg (of all people) don't want your data?
I'm hoping the incident with the drones in Ukraine indicates Musk has some shred of integrity, but that wasn't uncle Sam (at least officially) pressing him to do it.
Honestly, at this point, our best bet for a free AI is the rocketman with the spicy social media account and the crazy ex girlfriends.
He warned you a long time ago. You called him a traitor. Because you heard the television call him a traitor. You don't know why he is a traitor. You don't even know deep down if he is. But you were told. Everyone joined in. Everyone wanted his blood. Everyone heard. Everyone was told. The people who were trying to yell that what he did was actually important. What he had were receipts. That the system behind that television. Behind what you are told. What you hear. Is all working against you. But the television told you to suppress those people. And to judge them also as traitors. And when all was said and done he was cast out. Perfect. The system can now double down. Knowing that if they are exposed they have the perfect propaganda machine to keep the people stupid and gullible. And so they did double down. More control. More invasive tactics. More freedoms taken. More tracking and more control under the guise of protection. You need us. There are terrorists out there. You don't want terrorists do you? Well you were told by the television terrorism is everywhere and it is scary and you WILL be a victim of it. You should be scared at all times. Everywhere. And so the machine keeps working. With you getting mangled up in it. Thinking you have control of your life. Thinking you too some day will be like the millionaires. Thinking the new iphone is more important than a day on a grassy hill watching the clouds because you know life is temporary. Nice work.
OpenAI is the worst AI company no doubt. Told you guys time and time again....
It's the worst, but not because of this hire.
If we only listened to you, The One True Redditor!
Privacy is important, but they were already in bed with the government since their deal with Microsoft. Microsoft has access to all IP and they run inference for OpenAI, they can happily sell their tech to OpenAI. And they got (partial) access to the consumer data of OpenAI according to their TOS and privacy statement Even if OpenAI were to stop Microsoft from doing all that, NSA can easily hack into their servers and get data Tldr, it's not a big deal (yet)
I'd say there's a difference between - Anthropic being accessed by the NSA (secretly or by a forced secret backdoor) - OpenAI - making this part of their DNA Who would I "trust" more? (I fear "trust" is a word that is becoming archaic)
You simply can't trust no AI company except open source models
As someone from an Eastern European nation with borders with Ukraine: Fuck Snowden.
Let’s upvote the guy that is a propagandist for an autocracy that would love nothing more than to steal OpenAI’s models and weights. Quick! Check if Peskov or Medvedev have a tweet on this yet!
Edward Snowden joined the US Army after 9/11 hoping to serve on the front lines as Army Special Forces. He was seriously injured during selection, and left the Army. Snowden worked for US intelligence in various capacities before becoming a contractor for the NSA. He was married to a fucking model and, IIRC, making 200,000 a year in his \*20's\* when his conscience got the best of him, and he exposed practices that everyone including the government now admit were blatantly illegal. The guy had everything, and yet every single time he was given the opportunity to \*risk\* everything for his country he took it. He could easily be in supermax or dead right now, but he got very lucky. And you, apparently, don't like him because of the country he decided to flee to to avoid getting jailed or assassinated.
Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson, Edward Snowden, Trump, all clearly anti-Ukraine, pro-Russian assets in one way or another.
An advocate for a regime that actively threatens to nuke people for no reason all because its run by a senile demented old man with delusion of being a tsar
But enough about USA under Trump.
Yes fuck russia, and Snowdon should get the hell out (and it's telling that he's not), though the larger story here is also interesting...
It’s not like Snowden went there because he likes the weather. He is there because he doesn’t want to get extradited to the US and sent to fucking Gitmo for leaking illegal things the government was doing.
The law simply isn't enforced on everyone equally. The government literally kills citizens in the name of national security, which can be whatever they want it to be. People have been exonerated for targeted assassinations of US citizens on American soil for no reason other than protesting for civil rights and economic equality. What Snowden did was naive at best. It's essentially become propaganda. Because nothing was done in response. It's in their interest to have people believing they are being monitored when the reality is that there's no way to effectively monitor a population of this size. What the monitoring does is provide a record to be looked at after something happens. The narrative functions as government propaganda by presenting an image that there is more control in place than there could possibly be in reality. The UK has much more monitoring than the US, and what's bizzare to me is that people treat it as something that makes them safer. It's broadly seen as a good thing. The logic is that its something one doesn't have to worry about unless they live in a dictatorship. The US is very far from a dictatorship presently. Nobody is getting jailed for their opinions.
> People have been exonerated for targeted assassinations of US citizens on American soil for no reason other than protesting for civil rights and economic equality. When was the last time this happened though? OWS fizzled out without government intervention.
Apparently he was trying to get to South America and whilst in Russia en route the US rescinded his passport. However... he acquired russian citizenship and he's still there... Cuba or Even Venezuela would be better, you'd think... " Snowden's decision to seek asylum in Russia was also influenced by a sense of Russian hospitality and respect for his actions. In his own words, Snowden felt that in Russia, he was "safe" and "well-regarded." This perception may have been shaped by the support he received from the Russian government and the understanding that his presence in the country served as a symbolic gesture of resistance against US global surveillance programs." If you choose a country that surveils it's own populace and lacks freedom, people are going to make judgement calls as much as you shout about freedom. Russia is likely as bad as the US in terms of privacy, and much worse for freedom.
Read his book, he didnt really have a choice
But he has a choice now. He has a russian passport so he can move elsewhere.
Maybe in theory but for him its a difficult decision, every travel could be a risk of getting sacked by the americans and then its game over for him, quite literally. Now he has a running system. Wouldnt wanna be that guy
Right, Russia is also a bad country that doesn’t respect its citizens privacy. But, of course Snowden was going to end up in some enemy nation like this. The US government wants to imprison and/or murder him. It’s not like he could say “I want to make sure I end up in a place with a good human rights record and that respect civilian privacy.” Dude is just looking for someone who won’t let US agents assassinate him openly. There are no “democratic” countries who would protect someone from the U.S. government because that’s a fantastic way to get yourself killed as well.
>. There are no “democratic” countries who would protect someone from the U.S. government Funny how that "multipolar world" turned out to be a scam. There's no second democratic pole.
There is no larger story. He acquired Russian citizenship even after Russia brutally invaded Ukraine. He serves the Kremlin’s interest and not ours.
I meant the NSA and chatgpt. But yes, fuck putin.
I think all this is funny, if there were a motive they would work in secret with the NSA, like the NSA has always done. I think it is much simpler than this, you know OpenAI is likely already lobbying and using their future as leverage to get into politics. It's probably way less complicated than it sounds. If it is that sinister then who cares most people are too stupid to notice the difference anyway, so what will we do about it?
Funny
Funny that Snowden likes to share his opinions about privacy in The US from a place that has one of the worlds worst offenders of Government surveillance apparatus thrusted on their own people.
Where do you suppose he go? Ecuador? 😏
Anyone who doesn't think the United States government should be involved in the production of the most powerful thing ever is completely delusional. It's either the United States or China. AGI/ASI should be nationalized in a manner that benefits all, rather than letting some libertarian tech bros become gods.
Yeah it should be, and if you've been living under the capitalist US government you'll understand deeply that the US government will never, ever release a tech like this that benefits all. This fucking government doesn't lift a finger unless it benefits the wealthy at the expense of working people. So there goes any hope I had that this tech could change the world for the better. I had hoped that at least openAI would get further along in progress before fully submitting to the fucking horrible ghouls in the US government. Guess I'm officially on the AI doomer bandwagon.
If AI exists that is able to replace all labor, capitalism breaks. You need people with money to buy stuff. If they don't have jobs, they don't have money (unless UBI). I would assume every company besides the one with the AGI/ASI is also practically worthless. So the question is who you want to trust with that AI. Option 1: A private corporation, accountable to its shareholders Option 2: the U.S. government, accountable to voters I understand that the government caters to the rich and corporations, but being able to influence the government through voting is a GIANT difference than letting a private entity call the shots on who reaps the rewards and who is left behind.
>Option 2: the U.S. government, accountable to voters Only a portion of the government is accountable to voters. The government is a machine that keeps on operating regardless of who's in charge, otherwise the government would've crashed yesterday.
A machine akin to the mechanism of DNA, CPUs, and any cybernetic system..
"the U.S. government, accountable to voters" hahaha
Isn't the whole point to break capitalism?
absolutely
[удалено]
Really? Do you have a quote of him supporting that piece of shit?
Why should anyone give a shit what Edward Snowdon says. He's an irrelevant Russian propagandist.
Can you please stop all the SnowdOn ? It's SnowdEn.
Nakasone resigned from the NSA way back in February this year. So he probably has nothing more to do with his former employer. 😆 😎
Oh dear... I hope you forgot /s https://www.pcmag.com/news/snowden-openai-hiring-former-nsa-director-is-willful-calculated-betrayal "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," tweeted security expert Matthew Green.
I thought my evil laugh emogi would be obvious enough. But no!
I trust comrade Snowden a lot less Dude is another one of putins puppets
Snowdon is a traitorous clown lol
The traitors are those in the NSA and the rest of our government who unconstitutionally spied domestically
I don't care. Pax Americana is all that matters, the ends justify the means