TechTakes

1436 readers

210 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 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

140

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]

126 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] 1 points 1 year ago (1 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?

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

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

@emergencyfood @Evinceo Naw. People have some radioactive atoms in their bodies all the time. But the viruses are marked in another way: they have particular genetic sequences. And with the march of technology the Wuhan Institute of Virology would have sequenced the viruses they were studying and been able to compare the sequences on file with the Covid-19 pathogen.