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Elon Musk is responsible for “killing the world’s poorest children,” says Bill Gates
(arstechnica.com)
this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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Cool story, Bill. Who did you donate to? Why did you cut your philanthropic efforts to fight climate change and disease? Why have you and your buddies fought for minimizing and coopting government for years? Bill isn't innocent in all this, it's just a good time to blame Elon. Don't get me wrong, Elon 100% deserves it, but that doesn't mean that Bill isn't playing the PR game here.
Mmm yes. This is why I Lemmy. This article had so many bots praising him on Reddit. Refreshing to hear something other than boot licking
The problem is that billionaires should not exist but come on. $80 billion already donated. $7 Billion more just for Africa. Hundreds of millions in malaria research.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/11/17/bill-gates-foundation-pledges-7-billion-to-support-africa-health-and-agriculture/
Could he do more? Sure. But attacking someone who is doing a little because he isn't doing more doesn't seem fair.
Years ago Elon said he was disappointed when he met Bill Gates because Gates only wanted to talk about philanthropy and climate.
The 7 billion to Africa isn't as nice as it first seems either; it's investments into venture capitalist solutions, much more restrictive that aid and the profits are not realized by the locals
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/12/02/perhaps-bill-gates-not-best-expert-hunger-africa
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/11/10/open-letter-bill-gates-food-farming-and-africa
Bill Gates hasn't been CEO of Microsoft in 25 years. He left completely in 2008.
He didn't completely leave, he's literally the technical advisor listed under "key people" for Microsoft
Bill Gates continues to 'backstage' manage Microsoft despite official departure, as Satya Nadella relies on his advice for Microsoft's transformative AI initiative
Saytalla seeking advice doesn't mean Gates is making the business decisions.
And claiming Microsoft cloud services are worse than RTX's actual bombs that kill children is a stretch.
They all kill children and I boycott them all. You're the only one running defense by minimizing Microsoft's role here.
Claiming Gates isn't heavily involved and influential in the business decisions is just straight up untrue, stop whitewashing his contributions to genocide.
You know what actually supports Israel? Food imports. You should be boycotting American, Swiss, German and Dutch farm produce. Cut off their food and they can't bomb.
Any company with an office in Israel? You boycott every large business? EVERY ONE? Apple, AMD, Intel, ARM? They are all in Israel. How are you even replying to this post without uses the CPU's that you claim to boycott?
AI isn't killing children. Israeli leaders are killing children. OpenAI is super charged spell checker. Have you even used it? It fixes the grammar. It helps write software. But so did autocomplete before LLM's.
Are you an executive at Microsoft? Because if you aren't YOU DON'T KNOW THAT.
https://www.techspot.com/news/107724-sources-detail-growing-rift-between-sam-altman-satya.html
Directly partnering with and providing services/technology/AI to a state's military, that is in the act of war, is facilitating that war.
Using AI to target strikes/etc., is absolutely AI making the decision to kill. They just chose to let AI do it for them.
They all "directly partner" AMD, Intel, and Arm are all deep in Israeli military.
Image recognition was around decades before LLM's became the new "AI". Those weapons only function because of the Arm, AMD and Intel CPUs components What hardware is Microsoft cloud running on?
You said you boycott all of them. How are you posting a reply?
I am not the same commenter.
Providing goods on the free market is not the same thing as directly partnering. Please enlighten me, does Intel, AMD, and ARM specifically and directly sell/provide their specialized components through another mechanism than the free market to that state/military?
What hardware or software Microsoft chooses to power their infrastructure is their choice. Could the companies that provide this hardware boycott Microsoft? I don't know how effective that would be because you can't choose who buys your products on the free market - you, however, can choose who you directly sell to or contract with.
And I don't care how smart AI and specifically LLMs are. The hardware is irrelevant. AI is still determining the targets (and potentially even firing the shots). This technology and the companies who provide this specialized technology are, at minimum, participating in the slaughter. The AI is proprietary and closed-source, these companies are willingly providing access and working with their military to specialize it for war.
I don't see how the Israeli military purchasing Microsoft Office compared to purchasing AMD CPU's s different. They chose Microsoft for the services on an open market just like they chose Arm CPU's. And yes Arm engineers do "deep integration" with military contractors just like Microsoft provides services.
"The documents reveal that dozens of units in the Israeli army have purchased services from Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, in recent months " https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-azure-openai-israeli-army-cloud/
Azure is used for running Microsoft Office or whatever other PC software they use.
Can I get a copy of Microsoft's AI on the free market? Can I get direct support for killing children and women with a company's proprietary AI on the free market?
Your arguments have fallen flat, but I'm here to be enlightened. You know so much that you're defending these companies and diluting their involvement, so clearly I must be misunderstanding something here or my knowledge isn't sufficient.
Convince me harder that Microsoft's direct involvement is actually not so bad, and these dastardly companies that indirectly provide hardware are somehow just as responsible for AI killing innocents. If these hardware manufacturers have specific contracts or involvement with that state or its military, I'd like to know.
Microsoft Office also doesn't especially facilitate the killing of innocents. And they could easily use other software, the functionality isn't unique or specialized like AI.
Just to be clear, the whole world is indeed responsible for what happens here. The free market doesn't absolve everyone of their shared responsibility. You could pull your entire head of hair out boycotting or screaming at every individual or group that provides support to one thing or the other, direct or otherwise.
My goal is to just point out the truth and also help people see it clearly. Microsoft et. al are a symptom of a larger dysfunction in society. People are so disconnected and propagandized that they don't even know truth from fiction, and the people that do understand the truth (to some degree) sit there and downplay modern atrocities as "the best we can do" and point fingers wildly at individuals who the media wants us to pay attention to instead of addressing the root causes.
AI should not be used for military purposes. That's my point.
And I'd like to apologize in advance if I misunderstood or misrepresented your points.
The article said, "access to OpenAI". They didn't even claim they are using OpenAI.
And yes, you get Microsoft's AI called CoPilot when you buy Microsoft Office. OMG, Israel's elite strike team has access to Clippy!
I'm not trying to dilute their involvement. It's like IBM during the Holocaust. Are you similarly angry at Linus for not stopping Israel from using Linux? There are many distros and many are used in Israel.
Calling out "Microsoft AI is killing Palestinians" when the only evidence is Israel bought MS Office is beyond ridiculous. Meanwhile the US and Europe sells Israel food which if stopped would stop the Gaza attacks immediately.
There are companies selling bullets and you are angry with what cologne the killers purchased.
If engineers/developers directly involved with Microsoft have called out Microsoft, and they were quickly silenced and fired, I'm more inclined to believe them versus a supposed lack of evidence.
Older reporting: https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-azure-openai-israeli-army-cloud/
AI is a commodity that's being developed by the few. They are shaping it to do things that are not for human benefit, like war and surveillance. It's the truth. They are responsible for their choices and actions, they are consciously making this technology.
If you read the bottom part of my response, you'd hear that I'm just calling out the bullshit you're peddling. You don't really care, you're focused on purity testing impassioned individuals who feel strongly about these subjects.
Microsoft is making the decision to directly sell their AI to that state and its military. It doesn't change the fact that every being on earth shares responsibility as well. But I don't have a direct ability to stop Microsoft from choosing to sell their proprietary technologies to support a country in surveilling, targeting, and killing innocents.
I will do everything in my power to voice my opinion and convince others that AI shouldn't be used for war. I don't want to live in that world and I'm sure many others don't as well.
As for Linus, his stances about the use of his technology in war is pretty clear. He doesn't like it, but he can't stop it. His software is open-source. There's a big difference between open-source software you give to all for free (for the benefit of all of humanity) and proprietary software that you provide only with payment.
Thanks, the fact that he completely ignored the bolded text in my initial comment was a dead giveaway they don't actually give a shit about the morality of the situation.
The boycott list exists for a reason, as explained in detail on the BDS website. I abide by it as much as possible, amd is not on the list while Nvidia and Intel are. Since I had to get a Google phone for grapheneos, second hand one at least prevented me from handing money to Google.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but that doesn't mean people can't utilize the BDS movement to inform them on how to avoid the companies that contribute the most to Israel's genocidal apartheid state.
I hear you. I just wonder, will it be worth it in the end to for them to see to it that society rots and capitalism "wins", by shutting down discourse in the limited places that it is able to exist?
I'd reason that it won't be worth it. I just wish they could see it that way too.
I do appreciate that discourse is more viable on Lemmy than the corporate alternatives, I only see that as getting more important as corporations like Meta and Google crack down on fact checking and anti-fascist discussions.
I have my criticisms of the moderation on both the .ml and .world side of things, but at least the fediverse is flexible and fluid with the different instances. A lot of topics concerning imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and socialism have nuances that are important to cut through (all) government and corporate disinformation. But even here a lot of that nuance is overlooked in the larger or team-sporty communities.
Hopefully educational discussions will continue to gain prominence on here and brigading/group-think will be frowned upon and discouraged. This kind of FOSS social media is a great opportunity to grow global solidarity and class consciousness. Which is become ever more critical as global capitalism lashes out with fascism against (at first) the most vulnerable
💯%.
The problem is that the theft begins by simply becoming a billionaire in the first place. You don't get to be one by playing nice and not exploiting a lot of people and rules along the way. Sure the government could be blamed some for not having enough regulations in place to prevent/stop that, but capitalism ensures that businesses exploit any available loophole possible to maximize profit, otherwise you're a bad business.
While I can respect a lot of those philanthropic efforts, those should not be his decisions alone to make. That money should've been paid into taxes and distributed in agreed upon ways. $7 Billion dollars to Africa is just great, but it could do a lot of help here, too. I have no issues with sending $7B to Africa, but that sure seems like something the people should agree upon first, through some sort of national aid, and not as an effort to spare the conscience of an aging billionaire.
Fuck all billionaires. Every. Last. One. Forever.
That's why that was my first sentence!
Was your first point. I expanded on it by calling out that it is specifically theft and then going further to illustrate that he was using that theft to make personal choices about how that money should be spent, compounding the reasons I find this distasteful.
Forgiving it simply because it's philanthropy plays exactly into their narrative. Don't buy it! Don't defend billionaires to any extent.
As a capitalist, all of his solutions are capitalist. His efforts to slow climate change are primarily technological, with a focus on unproven horseshit like carbon capture rather than proven improvements like better, less car centric urban planning and reducing meat intake. He would never even consider an strategy of economic degrowth to fight climate change even though available evidence shows that that is exactly what we need.
I think we're well past the chance of urban designing our way out of the climate collapse.
We need to make major changes in our consumption to even make a dent, but I say our best shot is cold fusion and carbon capture. Those are obvious longshots.
We've created a runaway greenhouse gas effect. Even if we cut emissions to 0 temperatures will continue to climb.
Obviously cutting emissions to 0 would give us more time to fix this mess though
Still the wrong conversation. Yes he was appropriately villainized for anticompetitive behavior running Microsoft, accumulating excessive wealth at the expense of many others, but come on …..
Just no. His philanthropy, his wealth. His choice.
But I’m with you on inadequate taxation for the wealthy, and that we have a responsibility as a country to help the less privileged of humanity, and should not just assume someone’s personal largesse.
Not his wealth. That's my point.
It is his wealth. We don't have to like it, but that's how the current system works.
The current system needs to be retired. Wealth and power should not be concentrated to the degree that it is.
The human race is committing suicide needlessly, all because of concepts like "cost" and a system and world order that is out of control.
Philanthropists hoarding wealth and resources and then getting to choose which of the poors to allow to have any is actually part of the problem, even if it makes you feel good.
We saw that when Gates leveraged his contributions to force a vaccine that had been developed with public money for the benefit of humankind, to become patent locked and hard for the Third World to access or afford.
Gates has history of lawsuits against open source projects. And he actively donates against any real systemic change. For example he has invested heavily in carbon capture technology which is useless to making impact to climate change.
I'm fuzzy on the timeline but wiki says the sco Linux lawsuit was 2003. Gates had already quit being CEO in 2000.
Imagine how much extra money the countries of the world would have if they didnt have to pay for microsoft licenses and stuff like dat
It's their fault also, they could have switch to other systems
Yes, but Gates personally has been lobbying leaders all over the world for decades whenever there was any sort of momentum of governments switching to Linux. Sadly politicians are often corrupt or at least easy to manipulate.
Why did Bill fly on Epstein's Lolita Express?
Wrong place for “both sides the same”. Sure, any of us could do more, and billionaires could do a lot more, but you're equating a Nazi cutting entire government programs to aid the most vulnerable here and abroad, with a billionaire who has donated a significant portion of his personal wealth to aid humanity, including eradicating diseases
Yeah this asshole is a total hypocrite.
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
https://archive.ph/2024.10.22-141139/https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
Surprised I had to scroll so long for this article. This is probably the best example (recent history too) of Bill's actions killing kids.
I'm still glad he called Elon out. Let them fight.
This isn't Bill's action, it's Bill's inaction. As per those articles, all he did was not support the waiver of patents, which ultimately wasn't his decision anyway? He claimed that it would not significantly change production, or at least not quickly enough to matter.
It still seems shitty, but comparing to Elon? Who is actively cutting off the flow of medication that has already been manufactured and paid for - to dying children?
Allowing tuberculosis patients to lapse partway through treatment, thereby allowing drug resistant TB to skyrocket in impoverished communities and by extension the entite world?
Effectively guaranteeing a death sentence for infected children, who will experience a relapse of a horrifying but completely curable disease? Children who will not be able to afford the diagnostics and treatments for a second round because they are orders of magnitude more expensive for drug-resistant TB?
If you had read the article, you would know that he very actively pressured Oxford not to open license the vaccine, leveraging his $750 million donation to the university for vaccine research.
Really? Show me where.
It claims that he bragged about doing so, and links to another article.
But that other article doesn't support that claim with any evidence that he pressured them to keep their patent, that he bragged about it, or had any say in the final decision.
The sentence after where it says that... You have ctrl f. Use it.
Not sure what "evidence" you want... Bill Gates said it was true himself and did multiple interviews talking about it which are not hard to find. Every article I can find online says the same story - that Oxford initially planned to open license the vaccine and then Gates pressured them to change course.
It doesn't quote him, though. It just links to an article. Of which I provided the only seemingly relevant quotes.
Does "we told them... you really need to team up." count as bragging?
That's the only relevant quote I can see, and it amounts to him getting them to partner with AstraZeneca. It's hard to tell if the chicken comes before the egg - does AstraZeneca insist on patents, or does he?
Was it the only way to get a massive pharmaceutical partner like AstraZeneca to agree to a deal with Oxford? Or was it something he personally wanted?
Either way would appear the same - if he was directly involved in the deal, he'd be obligated to publically support it, patent restrictions and all.
The article is intentionally disingenous, as well. It claims:
Even though as you can see from - again - the same article it linked to before:
Which is - admittedly, temporarily - low prices and an extraordinarily reduced opportunity for profit. Especially given how significantly vaccination rate fell over time.
And:
There's no such thing as a good billionaire, but there is such a thing as worse billionaires. It seems like Bill Gates spent $750 million to fund vaccine development - including 1.5 million that happened to go to pre-pandemic funding of the decade-old research that made the mRNA technology even possible - and over a billion dollars on support for the WHO.
It also seems like he encouraged Oxford to partner with a giant pharmaeceutical company. This lead to them deciding not to open-source their vaccine.
It is a terrible thing to do, but it is also tough to say if they could have ever managed the immediately required production without a giant pharmaceutical partner like AstraZeneca. The first months of mass vaccination were by far the most critical.
Compared to Musk? Who took medication that was already manufactured, already bought and paid for, already in warehouses and ships and planes ready to help impoverished communities?
Who bought an election and leveraged that to suddenly and illegally cut off international aid out of spite and greed, allowing drug-resistant TB to flourish?
Who has the most money out of fucking all of them and doesn't spend a dime for anyone but himself?
That's the worst billionaire.