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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 1 year 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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[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 29 points 1 year ago (12 children)

There is an institute of virology in Wuhan, but it is most likely that Covid-19 spread naturally from bats to humans.

Bat coronaviruses are common in the South China - Thailand - Myanmar region, and viruses jump host species all the time.
Labs that handle human pathogens are maintained under very high security. The one in Wuhan is BSL4, the highest security rating, and had prior experience handling coronaviruses. Also, 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.
If it was released on purpose, then we can narrow the list of suspects down to the countries that can reliably make bioweapons and antidotes with close to 100% certainty. That's the US, China and maybe Russia. The US and Russia were among the worst affected, and China wouldn't have released the virus in China.

So the most likely explanation is that it is a bat virus that jumped hosts.

[–] Evinceo@awful.systems 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

the viruses themselves would be marked with radioactive isotopes.

Is that true? Once the virus replicated in a cell, the new copies wouldn't be tagged, right?

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The new ones wouldn't. But the original radioactive atoms would still be in your body, and they can be detected (within a reasonable amount of time).

Edit: But if the new viruses infect another person, they wouldn't have the radioactivity. So usually, in case of a leak, the plan would be to quarantine anyone exposed to the viruses (as detected by radioactivity) and anyone who has been with them that day.

[–] Evinceo@awful.systems 5 points 1 year ago

For the lab leak theory to work you have to assume not only that some workers at the lab got infected, but also that they spread it all over the city before anybody noticed, such that by the time anyone did notice, they were several degrees of contact from the lab workers.

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