I don’t think that being a CEO of another company is nearly as indicative of the nature of the character and priorities of a person as other kinds of life or professional experience.
Being a career military person that ends up as a head of a three letter agency requires a very specific kind of professional focus, worldview, and set of priorities.
A better example might be if a former member of the grateful dead joined the board of OAI. That would also be an indication of an intentional incorporation of a worldview into the guiding intellect of a company.
I think there is a significant lack of explanation in his jump to step 2, but I think this is where his domain experience is being applied.
The underwear -gnomeish jump here I think is: the “only” reasonable explanation for this (overtly terrible from an optics perspective) selection is that this is the NSA getting their hooks deeply into openAI in the same way they did with Google, which can now be reasonably considered a commercial extension or at least a close partner of the NSA.
Arguably, googles business model is based on violating the privacy of every person on earth to the maximum extent that they can get away with, so the somewhat hyperbolic statement seems less extreme in that context.
But, that is just my interpretation, I’m not in his head, so I could definitely be wrong. Still, this is my best estimate of the situation.
Unfortunately we live in a world where in effect, many companies have become, for all practical purposes, cartoon villains. So , lamentably, cartoon villain plots are now reasonably anticipated outcomes.
The only thing missing is the motive of harm, which is handily replaced by the motive of profit with indifference to harm.
My hypothesis is that in his time with the NSA, Snowden witnessed the cartoon-villainy that he called out, and that because of that experience, he identifies this recent event (of appointing an ex-NSA military officer to guide OAI) as a highly probable symptom of further villainy, this time is something arguably more expansive and impactful than FAANG.
It seems to me a rather reasonable conclusion , and framing it in sensational terms as the most reasonable approach to “sound the alarm “- a role that, for better or for worse, Snowden has taken.
Where there is smoke, there is fire is still an extremely useful adage, despite the overt lack of scientific rigor in its application.
This is not what I had in mind when I hoped I would live in interesting times.
Being a career military person that ends up as a head of a three letter agency requires a very specific kind of professional focus, worldview, and set of priorities.
A better example might be if a former member of the grateful dead joined the board of OAI. That would also be an indication of an intentional incorporation of a worldview into the guiding intellect of a company.