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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 [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago (40 children)

Wait, I've been out for a bit - what was the actual consensus on Covid? I genuinely thought there was a Wuhan Lab that this all originated from?

I'm not a nut job, I can be reasoned with, i just need to update my beliefs with new info

[–] [email protected] 88 points 2 years ago (14 children)

I believe the scientific consensus is that it originated in a wet market in Wuhan.

The "lab leak theory", while not impossible, is also shorthand for a morass of conspiracy theories grounded in racist attitudes towards China. It somehow conflates that the pandemic is China's fault, if not an outright attack from China, while simultaneously downplaying any efforts to mitigate such an attack.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

But would the world Powers have said something if it was an escaped virus out of the Chinese Lab in Wuhan?

I don't think it's a coincidence that the wet market is 20 mins from a lab working on bats and viruses.

You have a global Pandemic, but also a big part of the population wants revenge because the Chinese can't keep their lab viruses contained and killed grandma with covid, quite a spicy meatball there.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Of course the labs location isn't a coincidence. They built the lab that studies corona viruses near a huge natural reserve of bats infected with corona viruses.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Well maybe they shouldn't have, you know, in case there's a lab leak. Not saying there was, just saying that these virology labs scare me