The ability to reduce diseases and disorders in newborns sounds wonderful, until you find out which techno-fascist is behind the movement.
the headline misspelled eugenics.
I’m actually pro genetic engineering for this usecase. By expanding our medicine, we created an evolutionary problem: Carriers of genetic diseases keep passing their genes, passing the defects further. This will result in more and more health issues unless faulty genes themselves are fixed
They do realize that this is how most zombie apocalypse movies start. Genetic tapering to stop diseases.
Yeah that’s fiction for a reason
I mean the zombie part, sure.
Do you really think in the hands of Silicon Valley techbros this ain’t gonna get ugly?
In before this turns into “I want my baby to have blue eyes and 150 IQ”
TIL Sam is gay
further proof their homophobia is performative to have the peasants infighting about trans people they probably never met in their life.
The trans people they never knew they met.
I’ve been an androgynous (cis gay) man most of my life, and when I was young I was mistaken for a girl a lot. Hell I even had my own doubts for a while.
There’s lots of people out there that think that they can tell if someone is trans or not. Hell I have met LGBTQ+ people that think they can just tell. The truth is, they can’t.
You will have met trans people that you didn’t know are trans, and if you go around making assumptions, you’ll meet cis people you think are trans, but aren’t.
A couple of months ago I found out that this person I’ve been casually following on YouTube for almost a decade is a trans woman.
Like the absolutely easiest, most accurate way to tell if someone is trans is to just ask the person in question.
Like the absolutely easiest, most accurate way to tell if someone is trans is to just ask the person in question.
So, are you one of them Trans gingers or what?
Like that?
If it works as good as AI, people will be chronic liars, have multiple fingers, and be annoying attention whores always asking if they can “help” you.
I’m not sure I get the universal negativity to this. Like sure, Altman sucks as a person, and an individual having enough money to significantly bankroll research like this is a sign of an economic failure, but surely curing or preventing genetic disease is just about the most uncontroversial use human genetic modification could have?
“What’s bad with eugenics for the rich?”
He’s a bad person and he’s always lying.
It’ll only be available for the super rich, will expand to other augmentations/engineering, and will result in further reinforcing social mobility boundaries.
The response to something beneficial being only available to the rich shouldn’t be to avoid developing that thing, it should be to make it available to everyone. The failures of the US healthcare and economic systems don’t suddenly make developing new medical techniques a bad thing. Human augmentation is another issue from curing genetic disease, though I’d personally argue that wouldn’t be a bad cause either, with the same caveat about it availability. It at least has more potential to improve somebody’s life somewhere down the line than just buying a yacht with his ill gotten gains or some other useless rich person toy would.
If you can’t share basic healthcare with everyone, you’re not going to share genetic healthcare, either.
The government shouldn’t subsidize the development of super-healthcare (or pass conveniently targeted policies that enable its development at the expense of citizens) when all the non-billionaires get nothing but promises of I’ll-totally-share-it-you-guys from the same guy who says we’re-almost-at-AGI-we-just-need-another-trillion-dollars-I-swear.
The solution to billionaires having “ill-gotten gains” isn’t “well, let’s make sure he spends it responsibly”. It’s give the damn money back.
You misunderstand, I am not saying “make sure he spends it responsibly”. Nobody has has “made” him do this at all, and I didn’t advocate for a policy of doing so. What I’m saying is that I don’t think this particular use is worthy of condemnation the way his other actions are, because in the long run I think that this specific thing will end up benefiting people other than him no matter if he intends for that to happen or not (even if the American healthcare system prevents access, which I’m not confident it will do completely, not every country has that system, and it’s statistically improbable that the US will have it forever, and research results are both durable and cross borders). That sentiment isn’t saying that it excuses his wealth, just that I think people are seeing only the negatives in this merely because of the association with Altman’s name and ignoring the potential benefits out of cynicism. The concept is just as valid with him funding it as it would be had he been condemning it instead.
Generally speaking (by theory subscription), moral evaluations of an action consider the state of the agent.
“Is this a good technology?” And “Is Sam Altman doing good?” Are two radically different questions with radically different answers.
Right. Currently the ways we avoid genetic disease are screening partners, screening IVF embryos, and in utero testing + abortion.
Is that his motivation though? Wanna make a bet that this does or doesn’t end as he says at face value?
This isn’t really an answer to the ‘universal negativity’, but for a somewhat reasonable analysis of the pros and (surprisingly high number of) cons as well as some interesting grey areas, there’s an old LWT episode on this topic: https://youtu.be/AJm8PeWkiEU
There’s nothing uncontroversial about human genetic modification.
It’s a pandora’s box that just shouldn’t be opened.There’s nothing uncontroversial about human genetic modification.
It’s a pandora’s box that just shouldn’t be opened.writes the person who isn’t suffering because of a genetic disorder or met anybody suffering from a genetic disorder
That’s kind of a bold claim to make about someone you don’t know.
I can believe that there are good motivations for this kind of thing, and possibly even good applications, but you have to ask who gets to make the decisions on what to remove and what to leave, and what impact will it have?
Could we solve lots of problems? Absolutely. But is it the right tool for the problem? That’s a bit more nuanced. Sure, if we could edit out Alzheimers, or hereditary cancers, I’m sure most anyone would be on board with that idea, in a vacuum at least. But what about when the goals shift? Should we edit out autism? What about homosexuality? Hell, if we homogenise humanity and edit out racial differences, we could solve racism as well.
That’s obviously a bit extreme, but take blindness for example. I’m sure most sighted people would prefer to not be blind, and even among people born blind you’ll find supporters, but there’s also entire cultures and languages that have come about because of people being blind. Who gets to decide if that’s worth keeping or not?
That’s just one example, but you could replace blindness with deafness, or dwarfism, or any number of things.
Then there’s the question of what it’d mean for people who can’t access that kind of technology. What kind of future would this sort of thing create?
this sounds more interesting ☞ https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2025/may/22/the-extraordinary-promise-of-gene-editing-podcast
Doctors in the US have become the first to treat a baby with a customised gene-editing therapy after diagnosing the child with a severe genetic disorder that kills about half of those affected in early infancy. Ian Sample explains to Madeleine Finlay how this new therapy works and how it paves the way for even more complex gene editing techniques. David Liu, a professor at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the inventor of these therapies, also describes the barriers that could prevent them reaching patients, and how he thinks they can be overcome.
Because the US health care system already serves the wealthy and abandons the poor, any expensive treatments are seen as just further steps into a Gattaca future of even more dystopian disparity, especially when driven by a rich asshole personally.
Universal negativity is also kind of the norm around here. A lot of folks on Lemmy believe we are slaves sucking Satan’s cock for breakfast, and anything that isn’t a complete burn down of our system and way of life is a negative.
Bruh. I wish I was sucking Satan’s cock for breakfast. That at least implies some kind of reward coming down the line.
Please review the glimpse into our future titled “Gattaca” to see why people might be concerned.
This is the usual front to further develop “designer baby” tech (which we already have, it’s just the use is considered unethical). Mask investment as “saving the children” and altruistic to later flip the tech to billionaire friends so they can make little aryans on a d5 roll for a an AC of 1… Much like the open that turned for profit…
This really reminds me of “Brave New World”, kind of scary actually.
Shit, thanks for reminding me I’m scrolling instead of reading the copy in my bag.
And everyone already has the ability to pick their Soma
Engineer some humans who can survive in zero gravity without peeing out their bone minerals. Humans who can survive hard radiation in space without having their cells crippled from destroyed DNA.
Maybe start with simple organisms. Like algae. :)
I’d just like to have to trim my nails less frequently
I’d just like to have to trim my nails less frequently
i used to think like you, then i started (ab)using my hands for activities that wear them out. Now i’m glad that they’re growing sufficiently fast to replace/renew
I see you’ve also purchased a new scratching post
Dude. How fast are your fingernails growing that it’s a problem?
Oh hell no, don’t bring Jurassic Park to the real world, please.
(JP did this with dinos, but this is the exact thing that movie warned about, just in this case with humans instead of dinos)
Altman finds a way…
Similarly, the type of things currently going on with AI, most notably Grok being in bed with the Military, are what Terminator warns about.
-sigh- Dystopian/post-apocalyptic fiction is not supposed to be an instruction manual, guys, it’s supposed to be a warning…
No no. Do it with dinos!
If (and is a really, really big if) this open the door to a better understanding of this type of pathologies and a way to somewhat cure them, I would say that it would be for the better.
But of course I am sure it will not end this way…
