OpenAI announced the appointment of Paul M. Nakasone, a retired U.S. Army general and former head of the National Security Agency, to its board of directors. Nakasone, who led the NSA starting in 2018, will join the board's safety and security committee, which OpenAI established in late May to assess and improve its model testing policies and prevent misuse.
According to the Washington Post, OpenAI is trying to quell criticisms of its security practices through Nakasone's appointment, including from current and former employees who claim that the maker of ChatGPT prioritizes profits over the safety of its products. The company is facing increased scrutiny after several key staff departures and a public call for sweeping changes to its practices.
OpenAI stated that it is hiring more security engineers and increasing transparency around its approach to securing the systems that support its research. Last week, former employee Leopold Aschenbrenner mentioned in a podcast that he wrote a memo to OpenAI's board last year out of concern that the company's security was "glaringly inadequate" to prevent a foreign government from taking control of its technology through hacking.
Security researchers have also indicated that chatbot programs are vulnerable to "prompt injection" attacks, where hackers can infiltrate the company's computer systems via the chatbot connected to its internal databases. Some companies have also barred their employees from using ChatGPT for fear that OpenAI may not be able to sufficiently protect sensitive information entered into its chatbot.
Nakasone joins the OpenAI board amid a significant change in governance, set against a backdrop of stricter regulatory environments and increasing efforts to digitize government and military services, prompting tech firms to seek board members with military experience.
Nakasone stated, "OpenAI occupies a unique position, facing cyber threats while being a leader in transformative technologies that can revolutionize how institutions tackle them. I look forward to supporting the company in protecting its innovations while leveraging them for the benefit of society as a whole."
Until January, OpenAI had imposed a ban on using its products for "military and warfare" purposes. The company says it lifted the ban to permit military uses aligned with its values, including disaster relief and support for veterans.
Nakasone brings deep experience from Washington to the board, as the company aims to build a more sophisticated government relations strategy and convey to policymakers that American AI companies are a bulwark against China. When asked about artificial intelligence during a recent interview with Post Live, Nakasone replied, "We want to ensure that American companies... lead in the innovation of this technology, and I believe it is the revolutionary technology of this century."