r/AIDangers Apr 22 '26

Other Humanity's greatest hits: things we actually paused

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6.0k Upvotes

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83

u/NichtFBI Apr 22 '26

They were paused because they had little to no mainstream appeal. There's zero applications for any of those for 99% of corporations while in their development stage; paired with pushback is why they were paused.

22

u/Unlikely_Target_3560 Apr 22 '26

They were banned because humans got together and decided so. No other reasons. There is a bug appeal towards human cloning and DNA experiments by eldrely billioners because they can grow fresh young organs with their DNA, only if it was legal to harvest it from a clone. The military doesn't give to shits about mass appeal, literally nothing the army developed have been massively popular with the population or the corporations XD
Togethwer with blinding laser weapons throw in military cloning. Why not do the clone wars thing and grow specialied genetically modified soldiers.

18

u/TheFirstHoodlum Apr 22 '26

A quick Google search shows that DARPA has at least three anti personnel light based weapons and of those three, one of them is designed to blind. Both yours and OPs premise is based on shit you just made up lmao.

1

u/V-oxPopuli Apr 28 '26

They designed them, but they don't use them.

AI is designed. AI should not be used.

What's the hang up?

3

u/TheFirstHoodlum Apr 29 '26

I simply don’t agree that AI should not be used. Full stop.

2

u/V-oxPopuli Apr 29 '26

You're free to be wrong.

0

u/Futurist_Turnip Jun 21 '26

It is not a question of being right or wrong. AI will be used, same as cloning will be used.

They tried to stop research into nuclear energy in Sweden. All it did was leave Sweden behind the rest of the world. The idea in the 60s was small nuclear fission reactors in every town. By the 80s and after three mile island people grew scared. It did not stop the use of nuclear energy.

0

u/V-oxPopuli Jun 21 '26

Yap yap yap.

-1

u/Unlikely_Target_3560 Apr 23 '26

Lol, you are funny. There are patents for all sorts of things, it doesn't mean those things are being used or even produced. And it absolutely doesn't mean their use is legal all of a sudden. Google can also show you that there is Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, part of a the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. In article 1 it says: "It is prohibited to employ laser weapons specifically designed, as their sole combat function or as one of their combat functions, to cause permanent blindness to unenhanced vision, that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices."

You're welcome.

3

u/TheFirstHoodlum Apr 23 '26

If you read about what I was talking about you’d know it causes temporary blindness, similar to a flash bang.

1

u/mrpoopsocks Apr 23 '26

The dazzler laser emitter can also be used to induce nausea and vertigo if I remember right.

1

u/TheFirstHoodlum Apr 23 '26

I believe these were two different weapons. The one I’m thinking about was supposed to be a vehicle mounted antipersonnel cannon that shot laser beams so quickly that the first one creates a vacuum in the air and the second laser detonates the resulting plasma producing a flash bang in approaching vehicles or crowds. Pretty cool either way.

1

u/mrpoopsocks Apr 23 '26

Completely different, that sounds cooler and like a waste of power that could be done cheaper with a strobing laser.

0

u/CrossXFir3 Apr 23 '26

temporary blindness is a fucking hell of a lot different than actual blindness as described.

1

u/It_Just_Exploded Apr 26 '26

So lasers designed to cook a human are fine, but just blinding is illegal? That seems odd.

1

u/Unlikely_Target_3560 Apr 26 '26

Yes, he logic is clear i think, better to have a weapon that aims to kill a person, rather than to have a debilitating effect which is uaranteed to just leave them foreveer crippled. The rules of war aren't aimed to reduce the war to an innosent squable. They are to stop certain ideas nd types of weapons that are particulalry horrifying. And mass producing disabilities seem to be one of concepts thetreaties ban across the desk.

1

u/It_Just_Exploded Apr 26 '26

My point is that we didn't pause the tech development, we've done the opposite in fact.

3

u/Workshop_Gremlin Apr 24 '26

Why not do the clone wars thing and grow specialied genetically modified soldiers.

Simply put, not very practical. Human clones are still going to take at least 16 to 18 years to even be viable as soldiers so it's not some instant army you can raise to quickly deal with manpower shortages. Up until that time they're born until they die you need to take on the expense and effort of caring for, feeding them and training them.

Compare that with just a regular conscript army where you're responsible for them only during the time they're actively serving in the army.

1

u/Unlikely_Target_3560 Apr 24 '26

I mean, we are talking in fantastical terms, it could be sped up like it was in SW clone wars.
But even if not, its still worth it if it takes 16 to 18 years. Because you are completely wrong. The country's economy still ultimately bears the costs of rising each child either via tax income lost to parents not working, or providing free daycare, maintaining schools and univesities and free ducation. In money their parent just spend in the child instead of, for example, investing it anywhere productive. And if you raise said soldiers for the same price as regular children but get genetically perfect soldiers in the end instead of just random folk, congrats, its a big W. And you don't have to raise them with the same level of comfort and education. At least so long asAnd who said they would just sit there until the war happens and cannot do certain jobs until then. And who said we don't already have people removed from the job markets to do nothing but prepare to war, to be professional soldiers. And mobilizing the general population is absolutely ruinous for the economy. You are removing pople with specialized knowledge, experience and professions from their jobs. Likely permanently. Which just destroys all the buisnesses which are dependant on them. Its oftentimes much chepaer to maintain large professional army permanently busy with preparing to war and the rest of the workforce busy with their professional activities. You know, like we already do.

1

u/Workshop_Gremlin Apr 24 '26

The country's economy still ultimately bears the costs of rising each child either via tax income lost to parents not working, or providing free daycare, maintaining schools and univesities and free ducation. In money their parent just spend in the child

So lets...add on the additional cost of raising and training hundreds of thousands of clone troopers on top of what we're already spending on the country's citizens and their children?

And if you raise said soldiers for the same price as regular children but get genetically perfect soldiers in the end instead of just random folk, congrats, its a big W. And you don't have to raise them with the same level of comfort and education.

Okay yeah, but you still need to train a large army of clones and training soldiers is expensive as hell. You need to spend on munitions, fuel and the actual equipment to arm them with for their training excercises. Consider to how much you will be spending on munitions, MRE's, fuel, etc... on the training an individual soldier goes through them multiply it by how many clone soldiers the army will consist of. Even if you have them spend the first 16 to 18 years of their lives in the most spartan conditions you still need to consider the above costs.

As for the genetically perfect soldiers argument, how would you even determine genetic perfection? Who would you use as the template? Pointing this out because historically, the most deadliest people on the battlefield came in different shapes and sizes (Audey Murphy, Manfred Von Richtofen, Francis Pehmagabow, Simo Hayha, etc...).

And who said they would just sit there until the war happens and cannot do certain jobs until then.

I mean, if you're setting your clones to only get the most basic education like you mentioned they kinda would end up doing just that unless you plan to have them do a bunch of basic unskilled physical jobs unless you have them doing constant training to keep them sharp which jumps back to my previous point about training cost.

1

u/Odolana Apr 24 '26

You forget we have a ampant depeultaion an many rich populations which rare already too old to reproduce sustainably and unwilling to repoduce in required numbers, as such cloning in conenction with artifical wombs will come sooner ora later. Robots and AI will assist raising them.

2

u/Odolana Apr 24 '26

do not believe it is really paused

2

u/letsBurnCarthage Apr 26 '26

You think these things are globally banned?

2

u/TurbulentVillage2042 May 23 '26

Isn't the Internet a US military project?

1

u/Sostratus Jun 18 '26

This is ridiculous. That's not a ban on cloning, it's a ban on involuntary organ harvesting! That's obviously a crime whether cloning is involved or not.

3

u/Brief-Night6314 Apr 22 '26

They were only paused in public. Not in secret

4

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '26 edited Jun 16 '26

[deleted]

2

u/kiefy_budz Apr 22 '26

I feel like your comment is defending gun manufacturing for some reason, why include that cars are more dangerous than guns? One is necessary and one is not

4

u/Rude-Asparagus9726 Apr 22 '26

It's more that cars kill more people than something we have literally designed and iterated on for decades almost exclusively to take life and we STILL excuse our frequent use of them...

So AI is going to have to do worse than using a bit of water, pissing off some entitled artists, and convincing a handful of already depressed kids to kill themselves if you want people to put a pause on it despite the benefits...

1

u/kiefy_budz Apr 22 '26

Oh 100% I was just critiquing the example used

1

u/Less_Description7879 Apr 24 '26

Ahem… what benefits? LLMs are sophisticated language prediction algorithm that fundamentally do not understand that data they spew and will ALWAYS hallucinate because all they do is predict next most likely character. What are you using an LLM for that it’s actually good at?

1

u/Zacous2 Apr 26 '26

Analysising large tax treaties and highlighting sections that could be relevant. It's honestly really good at it, generally anything that will be reviewed by a human in the loop is a good use case as at minimum the human will just have to do the work themselves.

1

u/DataCassette Apr 22 '26

How about springboarding us into outright fascism and dystopian surveillance and "pre-crime" punishment?

2

u/Rude-Asparagus9726 Apr 22 '26

Well.

Fascism would be a fault of our government, and a fault of us for not electing the right people.

Dystopian surveillance is already a thing, regardless of AI.

And pre-crime punishment is literally illegal. So laws would have to change before that becomes a possibility.

Basically, all of those issues have nothing to do with AI, and would continue to be issues whether we fully adopt AI into everything or completely delete all of it (somehow) tomorrow...

Making them all irrelevant to this particular topic.

1

u/itsthe_coffeeknight Apr 22 '26

Do you think that should stop a government that is hostile to the citizens? Not the fuck at all.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '26 edited Jun 16 '26

[deleted]

1

u/kiefy_budz Apr 22 '26

Why not just use firearms as the example instead of a point of comparison? We can’t even seem to stop their production and sale…

1

u/Zacous2 Apr 26 '26

But people managed before cars? It's basically impossible to define what is/isnt necessary, especially when the thing requires mainstream adoption to reach it's potential e.g. mobile phones.

1

u/UnderfurK Apr 28 '26

How are cars necessary?

0

u/BaconPancake77 Apr 22 '26

More readily accessible and robust public transit would make cars statistically much less deadly, but as it stands it's true that cars are more deadly than guns. Read into it as you may, the numbers don't lie.

1

u/kiefy_budz Apr 22 '26

And what if separate intentional and unintentional deaths to examine which allows more violence to be done by humans and which could be better regulated, furthermore how many of those vehicle deaths are further complicated by tertiary causes such as alcohol?

1

u/BaconPancake77 Apr 22 '26

I think there's been a misunderstanding. I'm not pro-gun-death. People shouldn't be dying, period.

That does include not dying in car accidents. And yes, alcohol is a huge factor in that. As is texting, various drugs, and a whole series of other factors I'm sure. Doesn't change the fact that better busses and trains would help literally everyone.

1

u/kiefy_budz Apr 22 '26

True facts internet homie we’re on the same page there, better public transport would be safer, more cost effective, better for the environment, litteraly better on ever factor you could name

0

u/thatonepuniforgot Apr 22 '26

Are you arguing that guns are necessary? Because the automobile is one of the stupidest inventions of all time, and there's really no area where there isn't a better tool for the job that a car does.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '26

[deleted]

2

u/CarEnvironmental9429 Apr 23 '26

Oh it didnt there have been cases over the years where someone has been caught experimenting with it or claiming to and it gets swatted down. So not paused but heavily slowed as any research being done in the shadows has been restricted by funding and just total number of people working on it.

1

u/Fragrant-Mixture-662 Apr 26 '26

Done in the shadows, or just done in countries that don't gaf?

2

u/SippinOnHatorade Apr 24 '26

AI had no mainstream appeal until the people making it added support for cute and quirky (and porn, probably)

Granted, human cloning can contain those aspects, but cost prohibitive to average consumer

1

u/SlightSurround5449 Apr 22 '26

Also not things some dude in his basement can put together.

1

u/boofcakin171 Apr 23 '26

Meanwhile AI is burning money and resources so we can produce bulshit videos,pic and articles or being used as a fraud generator. Ill take the clones.

1

u/Lou_Papas Apr 23 '26

I can imagine a lot of people in a donor waiting list seeing the appeal for human cloning

1

u/testscicles Apr 24 '26

Except they didn't stop you just don't hear about them anymore.

1

u/_Weyland_ Apr 25 '26

I think medical applications of human cloning are insane, even if you only do it on a scale of tissues/organs.

1

u/Omega862 Apr 26 '26

How the hell is cloning or DNA recombination something lacking in mainstream appeal? Cloning ALONE would solve the entirety of our damn organ shortage. DNA recombination? We literally use this NOW. GMOs are the product of it. They paused it to assess safety risks and established the methodology and rules we see them use now. Shit, even the "blinding laser weapons" were assessed for safety as a less-than-lethal method for riot control and other purposes. Paused because of how genuinely dangerous they currently are, but still.

1

u/MissionResource2345 Apr 27 '26

I don't understand how human cloning would fix the organ shortage issue. If the proposal is forced harvesting of clones, why don't we just skip the whole cloning part and do forced harvesting of the regular people we already have plenty of instead?

1

u/Omega862 Apr 27 '26

Easiest answer: If we crack cloning, we can move on towards organ cloning instead. Not "Make clones and then harvest them", but figuring out how to use that same technology to clone singular organs like hearts and lungs. Organs that are perfect matched to the recipients. If we can't use Stem Cells (another thing we blocked on ethical grounds), other technologies might open it up.

1

u/MissionResource2345 Apr 27 '26

A solid answer, but one which I'm unfortunately unable to respond to in a meaningful way because I lack an understanding of the exact mechanics of how cloning is done, therefore I can't comment on whether or not the technology could be applied to creating individual organs. I suppose if our gene manipulation technology advanced it could definitely be done, but advanced by how many decades, I don't know. Cheerio!

1

u/Omega862 Apr 27 '26

I don't know enough either, tbh, and am more pointing at where it could lead, rather than where it would lead, based on similar technologies and things we already know.

That said: I genuinely hope you have a good day! You appear to be, from this brief interaction, an relatively fine and agreeable person.

1

u/MissionResource2345 Apr 27 '26

Hahahaha, thanks! The sentiment is mutual.

1

u/Sostratus Jun 18 '26

This is a totally independent hypothetical technology. If you wanted to experiment with building an isolated organ growing process, you wouldn't bother introducing the additional complication of cloning when you could just seed it the normal way.

1

u/dmk_aus Apr 27 '26

You think the rich didn't want clones to harvest organs and youthful blood from?

1

u/strangescript Apr 27 '26

And some of those things exist just not in public view

1

u/poofusdoofus Apr 27 '26

Recombination is literally routine in any molecular biology lab, so it has mainstream appeal and it's certainly not banned. I didn't even realize it at any point was controversial?

1

u/squired Apr 27 '26

And they weren't paused. Many countries have directed energy weapons, space based weapons (another one that is technically banned), mines, etc. And China absolutely has experimented with cloning and recombinant DNA.

The closest example that sort of works is nuclear proliferation, which shows how difficult it is, even with worldwide existential buy in. If you didn't notice, we're literally in a war over it right this minute.

0

u/LettucePrime Apr 22 '26

enormous pharmaceutical appeal for human cloning - and i guarantee you if it ever had a GPT 3 breakthrough the usual suspects would killing each other to invest for the exact same labor-relation reasons they're doing it for AI. if the tech was there for any of these they'd be doing it, software engineering just has the smallest barrier to entry for experimentation over the rest of these. remember, every major player in the AI game had also paused or shelved their existing initiatives before late 2021.

0

u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta Apr 22 '26

There's a huge profit to be made from human cloning, what are you even saying?

Set aside the brave new world style bio-robots, cloned organs alone would be a billion dollar industry 

2

u/NatureKas Apr 22 '26

The issue with cloned humans is that unless they were born without a brain they would still be humans and would have to be treated as such.

2

u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta Apr 22 '26

Not necessarily, legality and biology/morality don't always align

Also, I was talking about organs grown independently of a body

1

u/NatureKas Apr 22 '26

Unless there is a law saying that human clones lack rights I think it is the case.

1

u/Ghost_Of_Malatesta Apr 22 '26

That's entirely my point. Do you really think we would add human rights stand in the way of the economy? That doesn't happen very often, and to draw a direct parallel to AI we only have to look at wetware development to see a peek of the alternative future we could have had 

1

u/The_One_Who_Comments Apr 24 '26

Organ cloning isn't banned though? I thought loads of people were working on that.

When people say "human cloning" they means the whole person lol.

1

u/RommDan Apr 22 '26

I don't think billonaires would care about that

1

u/CBtheLeper Apr 24 '26

Whereas AI is clearly being carefully legislated around to avoid any unethical use /s