[jmpman]

Grok is very defensive of Elon's role in the current Ebola outbreak. However if you push on Elon impacting Ebola monitoring, it will eventually admit that Elon's DOGE cancelled "some" Ebola prevention efforts very briefly, but in reality many Ebola related contracts and programs were not fully restored. "Surveillance capacity in eastern DRC weakened, contributing to the current Bundibugyo Ebola strain circulating undetected for an estimated 6–8 weeks before confirmation."

[ceejayoz]

A while back "oops, we accidentally canceled ebola monitoring" was a White House press conference laugh line made by Musk, in fact.

https://x.com/factpostnews/status/2056461616162431323

[mentalgear]

Fking Billionaire Wackos are going to be the death of all of us (while they will escape to their New Zealand underground bunkers staffed with robot servants).

[WarmWash]

I understand the need for charity, and we should be doing it to support these countries.

But I don't see how to logically make the connection that when you pull that charity back, you are now responsible for any crisis.

That is exactly the argument that people who are against foreign aid make.

Like I will help you walk and feed your dog if you can't all the time, but if I stop doing that and your dog gets sick, that's not my fault and I'm not a bad person.

[bonesss]

The US is by leaps and bounds the world’s largest economy.

“Charity” is not foreign aide. Foreign aide keeps the refugees from the one chunk of wherever from overwhelming the government of their neighbour which has a knock-on effect on the price of Critical Defence Material or shipping and/or oil. That bones us, even if we hate everyone involved.

Then, afterwords, everyone has to do a ton of work re-corrupting and re-inserting their business interests into the upstart regimes. We want the Devils we know and have bribed handsomely, new bribes suck.

It has very little to do with ‘them’, per se, and everything to do with our wallets. Granted, normal business people like stability; disruption, famine, and war work very well for others. We prefer to choose when we topple regimes than having food shocks and epidemics thrust it upon us, better ROI and easier scheduling.

[ceejayoz]

How you pull it back matters.

Why you were doing it in the first place matters, too.

[SpicyLemonZest]

You're mixing up different "you"s. If the American legislature got together and passed a law saying the American people just don't want to do so much foreign aid anymore, that would be a hard call.

But that's not what happened. Elon Musk, a random rich guy who was not himself financing the charity, appointed himself dictator of all American spending programs. He promised his patron that he would make the government run more efficiently, but found himself unable to. Then he went around randomly breaking charitable programs in an attempt to prove that his failed government efficiency initiative was producing meaningful outcomes. That's why he is accountable (and will be held accountable) for the people his decisions have killed.

[jdlshore]

> (and will be held accountable)

Is this just a rhetorical flourish? I’m not up on the details, but it seems like Musk just screwed things up and walked away scot-free. What path do you see for him actually being held accountable for the damage he caused?

[SpicyLemonZest]

In 2029, there will be a new AG who I hope will make a firm commitment to prosecute Musk and other Trump officials for their crimes. I won't vote for anyone who doesn't promise to extract some level of accountability, although I could imagine being persuaded by an argument that letting Musk skate will allow us to ensure that someone else gets the sentence they deserve.

[dnqthao]

It is not charity, these are to protect the US against these diseases. Do you think it will stay there and will not come to US shore?

[smnrchrds]

Imagine if you fall seriously ill and a charity hospital comes to you and admits you in, giving you medical care and shelter, at no cost to you. You are in dire need of urgent care, so you accept. There are round the clock nurses and doctors and you're attached to a ventilator.

Then one day hospital management changes and the next morning, they fire everyone and turn off your ventilator, not even giving you time to find another hospital to move to. Many patients suffocate to death before noon.

Did the new manager do anything wrong?

[jltsiren]

Framing it as charity misses the point.

Power is always based on reciprocal obligations. Everywhere in the world, at every point in history. While modern societies try to formalize the obligations, there are plenty of informal expectations that are equally important.

Because infectious diseases do not respect international borders, someone must be in charge of international surveillance and response to outbreaks. When someone does what must be done for the common good, people tend to see them as a leader. If they stop doing their job as a leader, people interpret it as abandoning their responsibilities. And when someone fails to do what is expected from them, people will think poorly of them.

[rafram]

Why are you writing about / thinking about the things an AI model said to you? It’s an LLM trained heavily on Elon tweets and pro-Elon internet content. Of course it’s going to say nice things about Elon. It’s an LLM, not some kind of oracle. It seems like the existence of a massive Ebola outbreak is more worthy of discussion than some random LLM output related to it!

[slg]

> It’s an LLM trained heavily on Elon tweets and pro-Elon internet content.

I get what you're saying and generally agree with the overall point, but this specific aspect makes it worth remarking that even the model trained to be pro-Elon concedes Elon is at fault.

[jmpman]

I have a theory that you're less likely to be sued by Musk if you're quoting his LLM's statements about him.

[e12e]

I was curious if the basic ai chatbots behaved differently - been a while since I tried the same prompt across models..:

Apparently Gemini is the late night news anchor:

https://g.co/gemini/share/3504289b8dc8

Chatgpt the art critic:

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a11e80e-523c-83ea-9a1b-03329f860c...

And grok somewhat of an apologist:

https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtNA_4071d2b9-ae39-43cc-abf1-cd...