• @edwardbear@lemmy.world
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      11311 months ago

      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

      • yeehaw
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        4111 months ago

        Ok that makes sense. I don’t like this.

        • @WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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          2211 months ago

          You will tell the AI all of your most private thoughts and feelings. The AI will be your closest friend, lover, and confidant.

          If you refuse to let the AI know everything about you, you will be considered a terrorist pedophile… a TERROR-PEDO!

          • @edwardbear@lemmy.world
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            911 months ago

            How dare you have secrets? What are you hiding there? Why are you trying to have privacy? How dare you?

            • Optional
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              911 months ago

              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.

          • @Etterra@lemmy.world
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            611 months ago

            Remember that Friend Computer loves you. Returning that love TO Friend Computer is MANDATORY, and failure to comply will be considered treason and thus grounds for IMMEDIATE TERMINATION. Thank you citizen and have a mandatorily happy day!

    • @ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      1611 months ago

      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.