alt Hacker News> purpose of a gun is to kill things
I’ve fired guns. Never to kill things. I’ve also used chat bots to be entirely useless. I wouldn’t endorse this dichotomy of purpose as a basis for any judgement.
Replies
> whereas the purpose of a chat bot is to help people.
I'm flabbergasted you'd say such a thing.
The purpose of a chat bot is to have an interesting experience with an AI. That it may help you is secondary (and perhaps necessary for the provider to make a profit).
Fair but my point is simply, if a gun kills a person it's functioning as intended, but you can't say the same about a chat bot.
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
A gun puts holes into things. This has a pretty consistent effect on anything alive.