this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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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 Architeuthis@awful.systems 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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[–] Blapoo@lemmy.ml 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'm on your page at least - best evidence we had was that it leaked from a Wuhan lab.

Not sure what the conspiracy here is, other than "Rich man has thoughts that come close to an opinion on vaccines. Get the pitchforks!"

Missing the forest for the trees, it feels like - The man has a good point about synthetic viruses.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 25 points 11 months ago

Check my comment above. More scientists believe it was due to a random mutation (the similarity of the sequence to other bat coronaviruses was extremely similar, and this one was a small change that just happened to be potent), though there are also many scientists who find the wuhan lab more than circumstantial.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What

[–] Virkkunen@kbin.social 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They're lemmy.ml users, best course of action is to just ignore and move on.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thx, I'm kinda new to the lemmyverse so I haven't really figured out who is worth listening and replying to.

[–] froztbyte@awful.systems 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'm sad nobody posted Good News, They Let Dumb Sluts into Mensa Now (also in podcast longform) in reaction to that user mentioning Mensa.

[–] gerikson@awful.systems 6 points 11 months ago

Such a good podcast series, highly recommended.