Sam Altman and husband reportedly working to genetically engineer babies from having hereditary disease
https://www.the-independent.com/tech/sam-altman-genetically-engineer-hereditary-disease-b2865323.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.world232
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TIL Sam is gay
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.
So, are you one of them Trans gingers or what?
Like that?
Yes. Throw respect out the window and enquire directly about the status of their genitals too.
Pretty sure he and others like him are not gay; If they want to engineer babies, it's for a reason...
Odd way to learn altman is gay.
Kinda shocked I've never seen a "worlds richest gay man!" Headline. That feels like low hanging fru-
Does Thiel not have more money?
Thiel killed the outlet that outed him.
Another one I didn't know is gay.
Props to msm for not making it a big deal
Thiel was outed by Gawker and made it a mission to secretly fund the Hulk Hogan lawsuit which resulted in Gawker going bankrupt: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdrange/2016/06/21/peter-thiels-war-on-gawker-a-timeline/
Oh that one's because he goes nuclear when they do. He funded the killing of Gawker because they outed him.
Gay is only bad if the poors do it, of course /s
Honestly I don't think it's any of our business. Even rich assholes are allowed to have a private life. Although with some (Musk, Trump) that private life is so fucked up it's impossible to ignore, but generally I'm totally fine with not knowing who they fuck.
I worry more about that he is a full blown psycho.
The ability to reduce diseases and disorders in newborns sounds wonderful, until you find out which techno-fascist is behind the movement.
The other issue I have is that this is an example of a recurring issue in which the tech obsessed ultra wealthy declare their plan to solve a problem for which a very straightforward policy solution already exists.
We don't need tech to extend lives or feed the hungry. We just need to remove the paywalls to existing resources.
Yeah, here's an easy way to prevent most birth defects:
Free nutritious food
Regulating toxic chemicals
Prenatal education and healthcare
None of that will deal with an inherited genetic disorder
I think nutrition has a bigger effect than genetic variability
Oh come on.
This guy couldn't even get a train to run on time.
I mean, the original flavor didn't either
Not for a lack of trying
the headline misspelled eugenics.
Ah yes, please give me more of that sickle cell anemia.
In before this turns into "I want my baby to have blue eyes and 150 IQ"
It's an interesting ethical debate.
I have a hereditary condition which passes only by the X chromosome, so should I, as a man, abort a daughter? Because now the risk is too high and I've elected to simply not have children. It would be great if I could fix the single swapped base pair that would otherwise cause disfigurement and life-long health problems.
Yeah I'm always conflicted. Like eugenics is the end goal for these fascists but also... We should try to prevent hereditary defects rtct
The unforeseen effects should be enough to give us pause.
What do you mean with unforeseen effects in this context?
Unforeseen is pretty clear, by definition, that they're things we wouldn't be able to predict until they happen. I agree with the general sentiment in this thread btw, using genetics to prevent hereditary conditions or otherwise improve the human condition sounds great on paper but it's risky business.
I understand what the word means, but in which domain are the effects unpredictable? In terms of policy and enforcement of what may or may not be genetically modified, or what the genetic outcome would be of gene modification? I agree with the prior.
This is why billionaires should be kept away from sciences and tech but unfortunately they are all over it. The fact that these require lot of funding does not help.
They should be kept away from everything by not existing
High IQ would be sure nice, but has a large number of genes involved. Not that you need a high IQ as a farmer in a low technology future.
Since when are IQ scores indicative of intelligence?
G factor is highly correlated with real-life achievements. I make no other claim.
so all Lemmy takes from this article is that Sam Altman is gay.
Tim Cook, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel.
We have enough data points to suggest that being gay doesn't insulate you from being greedy and corrupt.
That's important, too.
Gay people are just as shitty as everyone else. They're no better or no worse. They just have sex with people of the same gender.
Who you want to fuck REALLY doesn't matter, like, at all, imo, in the grand scheme of things.
Unless you want to fuck everyone.
We have a code of conduct training at work that includes and anti corruption segment (nothing weird, just stuff like "a vendor buying lunch at a sales meeting is fine, but no gifts or having lunch at extremely expensive places", and "some places give small symbolic gifts around holidays, usually a pastry. That's fine. Do not accept a $500 pastry")
A couple years ago they updated the module and the person engaging in non-obvious corrupt business practices became gay in passing. The overwhelming response by a lot of the company was "yay! We made it guys! They realized that we like bribes too! I feel so seen".
If someone was going to accept a $500 pastry, I'd put my money on the gay guy.
(It's me.)
Why would it? I have never thought to myself, this seems like a bad person but he is gay so maybe not. :)
In a different time, it was popular to think that capitalism would be better if minorities were winning at it.
A few girlbosses and Diddys later, I'd like to think we know better.
Yeah, now we have a bigger pool to recruit our sociopaths from. Big win, huh?
Yeah ok.
Yeah i keep seeing so many awful people in leadership positions, but so many good people outside of leadership.
So we have any good leaders anywhere? Its an honest question at this point.
In my experience, occasionally a good one will still slip though the net.
Hey don't leave Trump out of this! He's at least bi.
I am surprised the American government is even backing them.
I thought this was a commonly known fact. He wasn't hiding it.
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?
I mean I can certainly imagine all sorts of crazy shit but I don't think it'll be any kind of outbreak that kills the species, call me optimistic
Five years ago someone ate a bat and it shut down the entire world. I think you need a better imagination.
That's a very different thing lol
The same guy who admitted he couldn't raise his child without ChatGPT btw.
This is a very good reminder - thank you.
This really reminds me of “Brave New World”, kind of scary actually.
And everyone already has the ability to pick their Soma
Shit, thanks for reminding me I'm scrolling instead of reading the copy in my bag.
Wait, this guy's gay?
Neoliberal utopia. The wealthy elite destroying the world and forcing eugenics on the masses fly a rainbow flag
Its working.
It's almost as if the forces of good and evil don't abide by the line we draw in the sand, for some reason.
So we’re skipping the Bell Riots and straight into Eugenics War?
Give me Butlerian jihad or give me death!
No thank you, I like Computers
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?
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.
I don't know about what other people see, but I see negatives because it's associated with a billionaire.
If Taylor Swift put her name on it, my opinion would not change.
Billionaires don't build, they finance machines that extract value from human beings.
Actual scientists have been working on using CRISPR to fight hereditary disease in the US and around the world.
This money should have gone to them instead of into yet another billionaire’s pet designer baby startup.
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.
Yeah, Elysium.
"What's bad with eugenics for the rich?"
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?
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.
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
wrong
Please review the glimpse into our future titled "Gattaca" to see why people might be concerned.
It's fiction.
You can find actual discrimination based on genetics or wealth or class into the present and past of the real world.
You entirely missed the point of the movie if you think it's only about genetic discrimination. It's about creating a permanent underclass of people who weren't wealthy enough to have had their parents make them genetically perfect. Exactly like what will happen once the rich have the ability to make themselves into the 'ubermensch' that they've been telling themselves they are for centuries.
Well it's science fiction. Being 'genetically perfect' (rofl) will impart less of an advantage than actually existing, mundane factors such as wealth and which country you were born in. Hell, the biggest advantage they could get is making sure their children is of the 'right' color.
I do not even think the biggest assholes like say Musk would genetically modify their children. He already thinks he is perfect.
I can also think of a few factors that would disadvantage poor people more than lack of eugenics.
Lack of healthcare. Climate change leading to people having to abandon their homeland and also exacerbating another factor. Bad nutrition. Bad education in combination with disinformation by wealth controlled media.
Genetic modification is not really a problem. It could also help some people if we fix our politics and make sure people get access to healthcare based on needs rather than means.
Seriously, fiction is not necessarily a good guide for politics.
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
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 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?
Anytime any non scientist wants to genetically engineer babies you should get very worried
When crypto or ai bros want to do that get outright scared
Doesn't help.
ah, ok, so GATTACA is up next. got it.
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.
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...
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.....
Warnings are usually about things that will happen, otherwise they shouldn't be called warnings.
What I dislike is how warnings made this all look far cooler and hotter at the same time than IRL.
No no. Do it with dinos!
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
There are more capable, actual medical professionals that can advance this field in a non-wallstreet all eggs in one basket kind of way.
Rich asshole says he'll invent something good but very expensive and so only available to the elite. People ITT: "Good things are bad!"
Yeah so, good for Altman, best idea he's had probably. Spend the money before the bubble pops my dude.
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...
If that were the case, wouldn’t the ones who didn’t get the genetic engineering be far more likely to reproduce and stride along with natural selection? I have a hard time seeing that event ever happening, short of the human population en mass deciding to engineer every baby on the planet before a single generation of which could have lived life and been studied for its effects.
What I think is more likely as a great filter is humans eventually settling on the idea that organic matter is really terrible medium for life. So, something with much more longevity, strength, efficiency, and brain power gets synthesized and we move in. At a certain point, wouldn’t biological life die off because life tends to yield to its more evolved forms? If us meat bags had to compete, how could we?
and I think there are more interesting answers to the Fermi Paradox than the Great Filter. For example, the expansion of space not being something we can overcome in travel. Or, maybe the way we perceive space is just so anthropic—we’re making poor assumptions about other beings.
As long as they wait until they’re 18.
This guy can.
You know, everybody makes a idiot of himself as best as he can, and this guy can.
This is how I find out that he's gay?
Well, good for him and his partner.
Wait a tic. I've seen this movie.
Suspiciously all blonde haired and blue eyed. All with reduced intelligence unless you pay a lifelong subscription.
What baby? How? I'm very confused right now.
Sounds like he's trying to create his own Musk-esq mythos.
Know what? Fair. Good for them.