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this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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Valid point, but worth also mentioning an anecdote I read years ago (can't remember from whom, perhaps Kurzweil?): when they were told the Human Genome Project had mapped 1% they were excited, saying it "had nearly finished", and then had to keep justifying the statement by explaining the exponential nature of such work to the majority of people who couldn't view it in any way other than as measured linearly per-result. Supposedly the project was completed only a few years later.
(Craig Ventor tried to copyright the human genome, prompting the rest of the genomics scientific community to race to beat him, so I'd claim that the HGP definitely had politics involved.)
Genuinely. I do wonder about the safeguards against such profiteering that clearly were not in place. I can understand the perspective of a company or entity that bootstraps discovery and innovation all on its own without any reference to prior art. But it's never the case.
Behind the thin veneer of professionalism of every tech company is a bunch of grown headless children cobbling together accessible open source tools or pouring through papers published in reputable scientific journals coming out of schools and universities. To re-invent the wheel would be madness, and yet every tech company implicitly makes the claim that they did it alone, instead of standing on the shoulders of the free and accessible tax-funded work that comes out of scientific institutions. It does make me sick to think about it.
Well said, starred this comment