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Timnit Gebru (she/her)

That's right "Blacks are more stupid than whites" and then he proceeds to call us the N word. That's not even the worst of it, because his entire career has been "raising awareness" about "dysgenic pressures" (the opposite of eugenic pressures), as existential risks to humanity. That is, those of us who are "stupider than mankind as a whole" reproducing too much and creating an inferior race.

27 comments
Timnit Gebru (she/her)

He feels ZERO need to hide any of this shit because he does it in the worst "scholarspeak" ever, until his very clear email came out. Then he had an even worse apology. We knew there would be ZERO consequences (ahhh the awful "cancel culture" amiright?), and Oxford students protested. Literally weeks after that the The New York Times just profiled him a couple of months ago.

Timnit Gebru (she/her)

AFTER all that, the Future of Life institute, co-founded by Musk and Max Tegraf (you can read here about the latter's Nazi funding & I don't have anything more to say about Elmo: lnkd.in/gC6m4Y4s), get to write a letter having the who's who of "AI" signing something about pausing it and saving humanity, also citing Bostrom (how wonderful). Now Yoshua who also signed that letter, writes another blogpost about "existential risk" also citing Bostrom.

Timnit Gebru (she/her)

Maybe stop your racist ass field before trying to "save humanity." Why don't you start by cleaning your own damn house and stop platforming the actual humans whose ideologies are threats to actual living humans right now?

Timnit Gebru (she/her)

The entire foundation of this field is the most racist shit I've ever seen. The more I learn the more bizarre it gets. And your favorites, OpenAI + co. are most influenced by, you guessed it, Nick Bostrom. "Altman has written about the influence Nick Bostrom...the "father" of longtermist thought, has had on him and his work": lnkd.in/gsVwrpJM

Cher Tailor

@timnitGebru wasn't Y Combinator the group that got caught funding ludicrous business ideas in exchange for personal favors?

Cher Tailor

@timnitGebru Sam Altman: I want to get the smartest people in a room together

Narrator: he then proceeded to fill a room with cryptocurrency conmen

GeePawHill

@timnitGebru Agreed, provided that we define "this field" as "exploitative extractive capitalists branding non-AI as AI to get better dividends".

Raven Onthill

@timnitGebru believing that "IQ tests" (terminology hardly used any more) measure "intelligence" accurately is, at this point, foolish and it is only a tiny minority of psychologists who believe that any more. (It was never all that widely believed by psychologists, most of whom regarded the tests as tools of narrow scope.)

How does he not know this? Why is this person intellectually credible?

Ьλ∂λ

@ravenonthill @timnitGebru That was written in 1996. He wouldn't phrase it as such today, at least not openly.

Raven Onthill

@pygy @timnitGebru @pygy Probably not, but the critiques of intelligence measurement go back decades before. For someone versed in statistics, it's a false statement as well as one using judgemental language.

Has Prof. Bengio repudiated the statement in the intervening years?

ApisNecros

@ravenonthill I just view it as a litmus test these days. Believe in the "power" of "IQ" tests? Yeah, we can't be friends.

Evergreen Toot fka Chip Butty

@timnitGebru this guy is teaching at Oxford now? No wonder we have the politicians we do

Doug Warren

@timnitGebru
Say what you want about Skynet, at least it wasn't a white supremacist.

We can't have nothin' good. It appears we can't even have anything that's slightly less catastrophic.

mempko

@timnitGebru Holy shit, I had no idea about Bostrom and his influence on people in AI. Thank you for digging up this dirt! Really sad to see Bengio spout Bostrom bullshit. No wonder they don't give a shit about AI bias.

mempko

@timnitGebru I just read his appology. Wow, what a tone deaf work of art. It should be studied for years as an act of idiotic responses. This man is smart? How?

mempko

@timnitGebru For those not aware of what #TESCREAL stood for (I didn't), this is a good thread about it

twitter.com/xriskology/status/

It stands for "transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, and longtermism".

Super handy way to sum up the Silicon Valley tech elite! Thanks Torres and Gebru!

Stephan

@mempko @timnitGebru "Longtermism" is a little ironic when one considers that many of them apparently have no problem polluting the atmosphere with their private jets and cars, thus fueling the climate change.

Steven Zekowski

@timnitGebru
It’s behind a paywall for me but one of the authors, Julia Black, was the guest on this excellent episode

techwontsave.us/episode/168_pr

She was a great guest. Fair and humble despite impressive accomplishments. She’s very relatable. Approaches all this as an intelligent regular-person. Discusses Altman as well as Musk and more. #tescreal and associated ideas Musk, Andreessen, & others (perhaps not Altman?) are into blew my mind.

strwbrryJen

@timnitGebru sam strikes me as a real life sam reamy spideeman villian so no horror would surprise me

Chumchum Tumtum

@timnitGebru soon as I saw Bostrom's name, in the first post, I knew I was going to be reading something both stupid and totally fucking crazy. Dude has caused massive negative consequences for all of humanity with his bullshit

Marv Clowder

@timnitGebru

freeradical.zone/@funnymonkey/

OpenAI states it will need to cease operating if people expect it to follow basic ethical guidelines

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