What’s behind OpenAI’s appointment of an ex-NSA director to its board

OpenAI has appointed a former director of the US National Security Agency (NSA) to its board to help oversee safety and security.

The company’s appointment of retired US Army General Paul M. Nakasone is likely motivated by its need to turn a profit, a Gartner analyst said.

Avivah Litan, distinguished VP analyst whose primary coverage areas include AI security and blockchain, had nothing but praise for his experience, but predicted his stay with the company will not last long.

Nakasone served as Commander of US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), one of 11 unified combatant commands of the US Department of Defense (DOD); as Director of the NSA; and as Chief of the Central Security Service from May 2018 through February 2024.

Aside from sitting on OpenAI’s board, Nakasone will also be a key member of the company’s recently formed Safety and Security Committee, a governance body that will oversee the safety and security of its AI models, as it embarks on the development of a successor to GPT-4.

“Security of OpenAI systems — from protecting the large AI training supercomputers we operate to securing our sensitive model weights and the data entrusted to us by customers — is central to achieving our mission. As AI technology becomes more capable on the path to artificial general intelligence (AGI), we are becoming more resilient to increasingly sophisticated threats over time,” the company said in a news release.

It went on to say that “Nakasone’s insights will also contribute to OpenAI’s efforts to better understand how AI can be used to strengthen cybersecurity by quickly detecting and responding to cybersecurity threats.”

The appointment comes at a time when controversy is dogging Sam Altman, the company’s CEO. On May 30, Computerworld asked Is OpenAI’s Sam Altman becoming a liability for Microsoft?, noting that “Altman’s reputation has been tarnished by claims he used the actress Scarlett Johansson’s voice to be the audio interface for a personal AI assistant (named Sky) without her permission.” Altman denied Johannson’s claims, but OpenAI did remove the voice from Sky without any explanation.

One day prior, former OpenAI board member Helen Toner shed new light on last year’s firing of Altman. Toner was one of four board members to vote for Altman’s dismissal in November 2023, before being ousted herself upon his return a week later.

Gartner’s Litan said OpenAI is “scrambling to regain trust among skeptical observers, and for good reason. How concerned are they really about trust and safety? It is hard to know what is true and what is not. One thing that is always true is, greed usually is the main motive for these companies. The hyperscalers, OpenAI and all these other groups are just pushing ahead into very dangerous territory. They say, ‘Oh, government, you have to take care of it.’ They know that is not going to work. Government cannot take care of social media so how is it going to take care of AI?”

The bottom line, she said, is that the company wants to “make money at the expense of all these unknowns and bringing Nakasone in helps give them credibility. He is a very credible person, and I am glad he is there, quite frankly. He has great background. He understands cybersecurity, he understands AI, he understands bureaucracy. But it is not enough. There is never going to be enough.”

The train, added Litan, “is on a run and there is no way to stop it.”

As for how long Nakasone will be a member of the OpenAI board, she predicts likely one or two years and no more. “It’s nice to have (him) there, but I doubt one very credible experienced individual can do that much.”

Nakasone, she said, simply will not have “that much power just because he is on the board and that committee. The developers and the people in charge of AI models are not always  going to listen to their board. The board will not know what is going on half the time if you ask me. Corporate America is usually pretty careful what they tell the board.”

Litan described the launch of the safety and security committee and his appointment, as “nice moves on paper, but I just do not think they are going to be that effective. Profit is the main motivator here.”