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.
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.