No, likely in anticipation of the rules being changed back.
Better question for you. Why did ISPs attempt to fake support for repealing Net Neutrality [0][1], as well as spend money lobbying Congress? You'll note in that article that there were also fake comments in support of Net Neutrality, apparently mostly generated by one individual, but many, many fake comments against it from ISPs that even used real people's identities [2].
These aren't the actions a company takes if they don't have incentive.
I think ethbro is saying that focusing on absolutely secure systems would drive up costs, not that if we make them more expensive we'll somehow get more security just because they're more expensive.
They weren't suggesting we need more secure OSes specifically, that was just an example.
A better example is maybe instead of Google spending $xxx,000 to develop the system that was found insecure they should have spent $x,000,000 so they had more resources devoted to the security aspects.
Perhaps this is too high for this system to exist; well maybe that system just shouldn't exist if it can't be secured properly with the budget for it.
One could argue that even if the AI doesn't actually work, if people believe it works then it could bring harm (sorta like lie detector tests which are ineffective but useful for getting confessions out of people who don't know any better). Hence junk science that could harm people of any orientation.
Junk science can certainly harm everyone, but if the research is junk then it won’t be able to harm anyone.
If you wanted to railroad someone specific into a confession you wouldn’t use this research, you would just use a lie detector. Potential harm can only arise if this research is not junk.
The real risk is that we sleepwalk into letting governments and large corporations build these systems without any discussion of the consequences.
The lie detector test was an example of junk science that still can be used to produce a desired result. Not meant to imply that people will use a "gaydar" to try and get people to confess to crimes. My mental contrived example was that homophobes in a homophobic community might doctor up such a system to try and convince other people in the community that someone they don't like is gay and should thus be ostracized, but I realize it's a stretch.
Potential harm can certainly arise if the research is junk. People misuse research or believe in junk research all the time. Just look at the anti-vaccines crowd.
Better question for you. Why did ISPs attempt to fake support for repealing Net Neutrality [0][1], as well as spend money lobbying Congress? You'll note in that article that there were also fake comments in support of Net Neutrality, apparently mostly generated by one individual, but many, many fake comments against it from ISPs that even used real people's identities [2].
These aren't the actions a company takes if they don't have incentive.
[0] https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2017/11/29/public-comme...
[2] https://mashable.com/article/fake-net-neutrality-comment-fcc