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Turns out Altman is a lab-leak covid truther, calls virus 'synthetic' according to Spectator piece on AI risk. (archive.is)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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Sam Altman, the recently fired (and rehired) chief executive of Open AI, was asked earlier this year by his fellow tech billionaire Patrick Collison what he thought of the risks of synthetic biology. ‘I would like to not have another synthetic pathogen cause a global pandemic. I think we can all agree that wasn’t a great experience,’ he replied. ‘Wasn’t that bad compared to what it could have been, but I’m surprised there has not been more global coordination and I think we should have more of that.’

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[–] 88 points 2 years ago (14 children)

I believe the scientific consensus is that it originated in a wet market in Wuhan.

The "lab leak theory", while not impossible, is also shorthand for a morass of conspiracy theories grounded in racist attitudes towards China. It somehow conflates that the pandemic is China's fault, if not an outright attack from China, while simultaneously downplaying any efforts to mitigate such an attack.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The racist connotations about the lab I knew about, but I didn't think it made it less true.

    That being said, I just checked wikipedia:

    Most scientists agree that, as with many other pandemics in human history,[1][2][3] the virus is likely derived from a bat-borne virus transmitted to humans via another animal in nature or during wildlife trade such as that in food markets.[11] Many other explanations, including several conspiracy theories, have been proposed.[12][13][14] Some scientists and politicians have speculated that SARS-CoV-2 was accidentally released from a laboratory. This theory is not supported by evidence.[15]

    SARS-CoV-2 has close genetic similarity to multiple previously identified bat coronaviruses, suggesting it crossed over into humans from bats

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_COVID-19

    and I think I remember seeing a study that showed the similarity of the sequence to other known sequences and it wasn't that dramatic a change.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago

    The racist connotations about the lab I knew about, but I didn’t think it made it less true.

    this is an absolute fuck of a sentence and seeing as how you keep JAQing off in a way that platforms conspiracy bullshit, you can just fuck off too

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    In the absence of any actual evidence, it does make it less true. Believing otherwise means ignoring all the obvious (but admittedly circumstantial) evidence that racism is super-fucking-popular. So Occam's Razor says if two theories have equal levels of zero evidence and one is inherently appealing to lizard brain, that one will gain prevalence so if you want to correct for that bias you have to bias in the opposite direction. How hard? Roll dice.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    But would the world Powers have said something if it was an escaped virus out of the Chinese Lab in Wuhan?

    I don't think it's a coincidence that the wet market is 20 mins from a lab working on bats and viruses.

    You have a global Pandemic, but also a big part of the population wants revenge because the Chinese can't keep their lab viruses contained and killed grandma with covid, quite a spicy meatball there.

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  • [–] 34 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Of course the labs location isn't a coincidence. They built the lab that studies corona viruses near a huge natural reserve of bats infected with corona viruses.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago

    but also a big part of the population wants revenge because the Chinese can’t keep their lab viruses contained and killed grandma with covid, quite a spicy meatball there.

    A shockingly large portion of the population is dumb and refuses to listen to reality, so it's no surprise they believe in a big bad ruining their 2020s and killing grandma rather than just dumb bad luck with a new virus.

    Let's also not forget that we also had a large amount of people who refused to do basic COVID prevention techniques like masking, so I'm betting the venn diagram here is pretty close to a circle...

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  • [–] -3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    grounded in racist attitudes towards China

    I don't understand why that's considered racist? Why is a conspiracy theory that China has a world class biolab capable of a global pandemic racist?

    A crazy conspiracy that a foreign power has biotech superiority isn't racism.

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  • [+] -6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I guess most people aren't up to date with this subject. There has been plenty of discussion with experts that point to the possibility of a lab leak. The wet market hypothesis has so many holes in it that it's impossible to take seriously.

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