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Comment by trgdr | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I don't want to be unfair or unkind, but his responses in this article seem to reflect rather poorly on his character. The thought process seems to be something like:

"There was an opportunity for someone to gain notoriety and money at a profound cost to the human race. Someone was going to do it. I don't actually feel bad about being the one to benefit, but it is fashionable to pretend to have a conscience about such things."

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After the war, Robert Oppenheimer remarked that the physicists involved in the Manhattan project had "known sin". Von Neumann's response was that "sometimes someone confesses a sin in order to take credit for it."

- From Norman Macrae's John von Neumann book

Isn't it true of everything though? Explosives, airplanes, electricity, computers - all double edged swords that have both greatly benefited humanity and caused great harm (with the potential for a lot more of both).

It is certainly true that there are many inventions that pose some sort of threat to humanity, and that they are generally pursued by people who have some sort of personal/professional interest in their development. In that respect, this isn't particularly different.

The sentiment of "Oh by the way this stuff is super bad and dangerous so we should be careful" just rings pretty hollow from someone who is at the tail-end of a career spent in pursuit of that exact bad, dangerous thing. If he were 20 years younger or not wealthy it's hard to believe that he would be saying this out loud, even if he believed it.

Also this sentiment rings _extra_ hollow from someone who supposedly left CMU because he didn't want to accept Pentagon funds or work on things that would be used for war. That feels like either an incoherent value system or some pretty substantial half-truths to me.

He's also saying though that his estimate of when it may surpass human intelligence is much less than he estimated just a few years ago.

Its a science fiction trope, perhaps a trope in real life as well. Brilliant scientist gets paid to work on potentially dangerous thing. They know it is potentially dangerous so they warn about it and are reassured over and over again that nothing will be done without their consent, or that things will be done with the utmost care and security. And then scientist finally succeeds in creating the thing and the business owner's greed takes over and releases it in a premature way.

Because it's their best shot at ensuring their kids' well-being? And if they don't have children, maybe they simply don't care.

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