Snowden warns ‘do not trust OpenAI’ after former NSA director appointed to board

“Do not ever trust OpenAI or its products,” the NSA employee-turned-whistleblower wrote on X Friday morning, after the company announced former US Army General Paul Nakasone’s appointment to the board’s new Safety and Security committee. “There’s only one reason for appointing a [NSA Director] to your board. This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth.” 

Snowden finished off his tweet ominously: “You have been warned.” 

This is not the first time Snowden has criticized OpenAI. Last April, during the annual crypto conference Consensus, he called out the ChatGPT maker for not being transparent about the data they train their models on. 

“It’s a poor joke, right? They refused to provide public access to their trading data, their models, the weights and so on – but they’re a leader in the space. They’re being rewarded. They’re being rewarded for antisocial behavior,” Snowden said, speaking virtually from Moscow. 

Snowden also expressed a hope for OpenAI and other tech companies to start spying “for the public” rather than on the public. However, the blistering tweet appears to be a sign that faith has departed. 

Nakasone will work to strengthen OpenAI’s capability to respond to “increasingly sophisticated” cybersecurity threats, the company said in its announcement. OpenAI’s new safety group replaces an earlier safety team that was disbanded after several of its leaders quit.

Following last year’s upheaval at the San Francisco-based AI company—during which its CEO Sam Altman was fired, then reappointed days later—Nakasone is one of several new members who have joined the board of directors as part of the leadership reset. He retired from the NSA in February, after serving as the agency’s director and as the head of U.S. Cyber Command.