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Comment by micromacrofoot | Hacker News Reader

you're just flipping it the opposite wrong way, just because I don't use something for its intended purpose doesn't change the intended purpose

guns were purpose-designed as killing machines, the fact that you can also shoot targets with them doesn't really change that... it's no mistake that many common paper targets are human or animal shaped

you could also shoot targets all the same with something designed to be non-lethal

whatever the justification, buying a gun carries on the behavior that has resulted in pretty much the most widespread trades of a lethal device in history... small arms trade worldwide is absolutely brutal

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> you're just flipping it the opposite wrong way

I'm not. Rejecting a dichotomy doesn't mean endorsing its opposite. Guns are absolutely more dangerous than chatbots. But I don't think going off a narrow purpose concludes anything about this lawsuit.

You're still bristling at the core concept by softening it again. Guns are weapons designed to kill, it's their originating and still primary purpose.

> Guns are weapons designed to kill, it's their originating and still primary purpose

Original, not primary. At least in America, most guns are not purchased with an intention to kill anything–they're for training. Trying to conclude the morality of a thing from its historic purpose is a bit silly. Particularly within the frame of a novel technology like AI.

Training for what?

> Training for what?

In the military, killing or disabling. In most other contexts, sport. You're broadly not going to know what someone aims to do with a gun solely from knowing that it is a gun.

Guns are obviously more dangerous than LLMs. But it's total nonsense to conclude LLMs are safe because they might have been originally intended to be so. Plenty of things that today have zero utility outside the military were originally invented for peaceful aims.

Staying alive in dangerous situations.

By allowing you to do what?

based on the numbers in the US, they may be training for suicide

I have a really hard time with this argument because I'm _positive_ 99.99% of bullets fired in the US are NOT being fired to kill things. So I see people this arguments and its like, hm, interesting. Interesting that the overwhelming vast majority of the use of this thing is NOT the use that you are claiming it is used for. Doesn't hold up.

The vast majority of bullets fired from most guns would be military training.

And even the military would acknowledge that a lot of the bullets they fire in a war aren't really intended to kill people specifically either.

And yet none of that makes this bizzare attempt to argue guns aren't designed and intended as lethal weapons any less ridiculous.

Small arms are one of the greatest scourges of machinery humanity has ever seen. It doesn't matter how many bullets have been fired. Their circulation has, and continues to, cause endless chains of suffering in nearly every corner of the world.

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