• Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    3 days ago

    Obviously, we don’t really care about Bill Clinton, but I would like to bring up someone a lot of us will care about, and should still treat the same way.

    Marvin Minsky was a pioneer in the AI field. He also had ties to Epstein. Now, you may not care about Minsky or AI (though I’ll point out that the research field and what capitalism is doing with that research are very different things). But you might care about Richard Stallman, and he comes into this, too:

    https://www.npr.org/2019/09/17/761718975/free-software-pioneer-quits-mit-over-his-comments-on-epstein-sex-trafficking-cas

    The controversy swirling around him now stems from a series of emails from a CSAIL group email list–made public by Selam Jie Gano–in which Stallman said that a 17-year-old girl who allegedly was instructed by Epstein to have sex with AI pioneer Marvin Minsky likely seemed “entirely willing” to engage in the illegal act. He also argued it is unfair to call such an incident “sexual assault”.

    Stallman dropped out as president of the Free Software Foundation because of this.

    Minsky himself died in 2016, but as far as I’m concerned, Stallman got exactly what he deserved. There’s no evidence he was directly involved as far as I’m aware, but those are not acceptable comments to make, and he shows some deep misunderstandings of consent here.