TechTakes

1491 readers

31 users here now

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.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

144

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 [email protected] to c/[email protected]

123 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.’

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year 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.