These people are very very rich, not very very smart. The track record of their judgment speaks for itself.

There are very real, very serious, risks from Machine Learning in general, but they are not the risks that these delusional dudes are talking about.

The real risks are not "coming in the near future." They are here with us today, and they affect systems that impact marginalized communities the most.

Most of the experts on the real risks are from marginalized communities.

All this talk of artificial general intelligence is a head fake to draw attention from the massive and real harms that can be caused by ML systems today.

Today's systems can:
* Issue a warrant for your arrest for a crime that you didn't even do based on facial recognition
* Decide that you are a pre-trial flight risk and deny you pre-trial release
* Give a false diagnosis at a hospital, deciding that you are not worth putting on life support
* Tell a car to run you over as you cross the street

@AutisticMumTo3 @mekkaokereke I found a classic video of it. Here's a video from when facial recog was new. It was clear that the data used to train the software didn't have enough black people. This sort of design goes back to

https://youtu.be/t4DT3tQqgRM

This goes back to the ~~nature~~ origin of film itself and this shows up again and again and again with every technology. We're literally afterthoughts. Make camera, make it beautiful, then make it work for black people.

@marypcbuk @wolfkin @AutisticMumTo3 @mekkaokereke I first realized that it's a choice as an anglo getting film developed in south India - there, they default to darker skin (as makes sense), so I looked radioactive in most of the photos. The rolls I developed in the US, my Tamil friends were extra dark and indistinct.

From what I hear, modern digital photography has made great strides on working for everyone.