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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 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (40 children)

Wait, I've been out for a bit - what was the actual consensus on Covid? I genuinely thought there was a Wuhan Lab that this all originated from?

I'm not a nut job, I can be reasoned with, i just need to update my beliefs with new info

[–] [email protected] 88 points 11 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 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.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Well maybe they shouldn't have, you know, in case there's a lab leak. Not saying there was, just saying that these virology labs scare me

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

duh, duh duh, duh, duuuuuuuuuh, yup.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months 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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