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Comment by Chance-Device | Hacker News Reader

Really now, everything is bad? Trying to cure diseases? Talking about it? That’s bad somehow! Let me sit here on my ass and do nothing instead.

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This is cheap. Plenty of scientists, many of whom are my friends, are working very hard on finding new therapies for cancer, they were doing it before genomic models came along and still doing it now. The amount of times something in the media is lauded as "holy grail" that is never heard from again because it either only works in mice or turns out to be toxic or 100s of different reasons is massive. In my opinion this attitude of putting rose glasses on is detrimental to scientific progress. People outside of cancer research routinely underestimate how hard it is to find a working protocol. I think it is better to have sober attitude because it allows one to see the limitations and challenges that need to be tackled, blindly hoping AI can solve everything and deliver miracle cures is exactly the attitude that lets people sit on their asses and do nothing.

Who are you referring to? This reads like projection.

Read the comment. This is cynical and bad because they’re going to advertise that they’re trying to do something socially beneficial.

It’s the top rated comment in the thread. Somebody tried to do something good, this is the response.

This pisses me off severely.

It’s because these people do not believe they are trying to do something good, but instead run a cynical plot to get more powerful under the guise

You're only seeing part of the picture and you're pissed off about how people dislike the whole other part of the picture you're disregarding.

No wonder it feels confusing.

Your comment is vacuous. There isn’t any other part of the picture. Trying to advance medicine is inherently good. It doesn’t matter how much you use it for marketing. None of what they have done is fake or useless, it is at worst early.

Unit 731 supposedly advanced medicine no?

This is just silly.

The point is just you can't just insist on looking at the pros and ignoring the cons of something broad.

> There isn’t any other part of the picture.

Except there is. At the risk of mixing pop references, you're a Sith dealing in absolutes saying "doesn't look like anything to me".

Would you care to state what this picture is?

Misrepresenting matters of fact with regards to AI capabilities, their perceived threat to the public, as well as unorthodox accounting that wouldn't pass the smell test of a summer intern in Wall Street, all to fuel an unsustainable hype in the hopes that (1) the government enacts regulatory capture to create a moat for AI foundries by fiat and (2) the incoming IPO miraculously fixes the propped up valuations secured in private markets.

First, do no harm.

If that’s your picture then I see why you didn’t just come out and say it in your first reply. It’s all your own speculation and still has nothing to do with the fact that trying to make medical progress is a good thing.

In fact, I think it's great and I'm rooting for them. I just don't think it's likely to improve AI's public image anytime soon.

Glad to hear how you feel about it. However, and this applies more generally than your comment above, what people online often forget is that there is such a thing as both positive and negative reinforcement. If you don’t reinforce good behaviours as well as denouncing bad ones, then you don’t get good outcomes.

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