In a 2005 New York Times opinion piece, Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy discussed serious decisions facing those who control powerful technological and scientific data, know-how and instrumentation.
Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
What would count as true or false
True: a New York Times opinion piece published in 2005 and co-authored by Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy discusses decisions facing those who control powerful technological or scientific data, know-how or instrumentation. Mostly true: the piece exists and is co-authored as stated, with a minor discrepancy in the date or in how the topic is characterised. Mostly false: the piece exists but differs in a material respect, such as a different author or publication, or a substantially different topic. False: the record shows no such co-authored 2005 NYT piece.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
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E1 Bringing back a deadly flu virus organissimo.org forum (reposting the New York Times OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS piece) · 17 October 2005
“By RAY KURZWEIL and BILL JOY”
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E2 Kurzweil & Joy protest risky (natural) nanomachine recipe publication Foresight Institute · 20 October 2005
“In an Oct 17 New York Times op-ed, Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy combine forces to question the recent publication of the genome for the dangerous 1918 flu virus”
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E3 the Kurzweil Library Kurzweil Library (Ray Kurzweil's own site) · 1 December 2020 Own record
“In my 2005 opinion piece for the New York Times — co-author Bill Joy and I discuss serious issues that need to be handled by groups in control of powerful tech, data, know-how, and instrumentation.”
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E4 Researching and Teaching the Ethics and Social Implications of Emerging Technologies in the Laboratory - Ethics and Society Springer (Ethics and Society / NanoEthics) · 5 March 2009
“Kurzweil R, Joy B (2005) “Recipe for destruction” Op ed, New York Times (October 17)”
Reasoning
E2 and E4, both independent, record an October 17, 2005 New York Times op-ed titled "Recipe for destruction" co-authored by Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy, and E1 reposts it with the byline "By RAY KURZWEIL and BILL JOY." E2 says the piece questions the publication of the genome of the dangerous 1918 flu virus. That is a decision facing those who hold powerful scientific data and know-how, consistent with the claimed topic.
Cite this claim
Ray Kurzweil, “In a 2005 New York Times opinion piece, Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy discussed serious decisions facing those who control powerful technological and scientific data, know-how and instrumentation.” (said October 2005). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_1be2a62b4662, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_1be2a62b4662
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Ray Kurzweil
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Resolved true
“I didn’t sign, because I believe we can address the signers’ safety concerns in a more tailored way that doesn’t compromise these vital lines of research.”
Kurzweil did not sign the open letter calling for a pause on AI more powerful than GPT-4.
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Mostly false
“That was not true a year ago. But that’s true today.”
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Resolved true
“In 1999, I predicted 2029 for AGI and I still predict 2029.”
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Mixed
“AI hallucinations are still there, but are becoming much less frequent.”
AI hallucinations persist but are becoming much less frequent.
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Mixed
“But I got to 10 billion. It started to do things.”
Kurzweil said that at about 10 billion connections neural networks started to do things.
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.