SneerClub

wot i got so far:

Current “artificial general intelligence” researchers have a repeated habit of using a definition of “intelligence” from psychologist and ardent race scientist Linda Gottfredson. The definition looks innocuous, but was from Gottfredson’s 1994 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Mainstream Science on Intelligence,” a farrago of race science put forward as a defense of Charles Murray’s book The Bell Curve — signed off by 52 other race scientists, 20 of whom were from the Pioneer Fund.

Gottfredson’s piece was cited in Shane Legg’s Ph.D dissertation “Machine Super Intelligence,” in which he called it “an especially interesting definition as it was given as part of a group statement signed by 52 experts in the field” and that it therefore represented “a mainstream perspective” — an odd way to refer to Pioneer Fund race scientists. Somehow, this passed Legg’s dissertation committee.

The definition made it from Legg’s Ph.D into Microsoft and OpenAI’s “Sparks of AGI” paper, and from there to everyone else who copies citations to fill out their bibliography. When called out on this, Microsoft did finally remove the citation.