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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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[+] -7 points 2 years ago* (7 children)

the viruses themselves would be marked with radioactive isotopes. Even if they somehow got out of the building, it would be possible to find and quarantine all those exposed to it.

China wouldn't have released the virus in China

You don't know that. Nobody knows that, because China destroyed all the evidence. If this was true, they could have proved it, they could have shown the world! "Behold our innocence!!" Why didn't that happen?

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    One (simpler) explanation is that proving an absence of something is almost impossible, and that attempting too hard would make them look a heck of a lot guilty.

    There is a good reason why the burden of evidence is “innocent until proven guilty”, and yes this extends to the (in your eyes) untrustworthy.

    Prove to me you never stole candy from a store as a child (or if you did, replace that accusation with any item of higher value until you hit something you did not steal)

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

    There is also the whole 'why would we have to prove anything? We are fucking China!' stance all big hegemonic countries have.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    You don't know that.

    Yes, but we can reason based on what we know.

    If this was true, they could have proved it, they could have shown the world! "Behold our innocence!!" Why didn't that happen?

    Most likely the municipality were trying to cover up corruption in the regulation of the wet markets. Maybe they ignored health and safety laws in return for bribes, and didn't want that to come out.

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