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.’

  • swlabr@awful.systems
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    1 year ago

    I would like to not have another synthetic pathogen cause a global pandemic.

    Gonna ignore the urge to sneer at the tinfoil hattery here. See the rest of this comment section for that.

    I think we can all agree that wasn’t a great experience

    Sam, you have a doomsday bunker and a bunch of cash. This was one of your dream scenarios. Don’t pretend like you’re one of us.

    • Charlie Stross@wandering.shop
      cake
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      @swlabr He doesn’t have mirrorshade-wearing bodyguard goons wearing collar bombs to keep them in line after civilization collapses. Or a long pork sushi chef. Yet.

      • swlabr@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Yeah that’s probably what he meant by not a “great experience.” Our billionaire baby boy couldn’t get a nice night’s sleep without his hommes au jus.

      • swlabr@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        1 year ago

        hey guy, accounting for the fact that he has overabundant capital and thus has a fundamentally different human experience to the rest of us schmucks is in fact not fucked at all, it is just normal contextualisation, you fool, you absolute buffoon,

      • froztbyte@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        1 year ago

        Pro-tip: you can choose not to be a volunteer marketwashing billionaire stan

        Sammyboi isn’t going to give you a hug or a handshake for helping his image

        • Soyweiser@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          Those kinds of comments are also so weird, because the remark was that he has money and a doomsday bunker. Like how do you ignore half that sentence? It wasn’t even long.

          Of course in reality it doesn’t seem Sam has a bunker, it is worse. he actually makes fun of the people with money who have bunkers, I hope Atheartengineer is consistent and also tells Sam his comments are fucked, and that Sam is inconsiderate for making fun of those poor people with money. ;)

          (The latter part of the comment was just me going ‘wait does he even have a doomsday bunker’ it comes from my curiosity and attempts at being funny not some deep seated fight against hypocrisy)

            • Soyweiser@awful.systems
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              9
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              The whole bunker/bunkerlikes thing is one of the more evil things the megarich have done. And imho it also points to some very dark futures which causes me to have some feelings re the future which I try not to talk about online (as I don’t think negativity is productive, and I it is very likely they (and via that me too) are wrong, they are idiots after all). But yeah they are not even trying!

        • self@awful.systems
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          Aspiring polymath. Applied R&D @ Privacy and Scaling Explorations #maker #Ethereum🦇🔊🐼🐍🟨🦀 Trying to make the internet better. Opinions are my own and subject to change

          of fucking course

      • corbin@awful.systems
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        Money is power and the powerful already get enough influence over us through other means. We shouldn’t directly listen to them, and in fact we should be skeptical of their claims.