All Quotes

"Vegetable substances contain all the elements necessary for the nourishment of man, and for the production of force and caloric."

"The immense work which is executed by oxen, horses, mules, elephants, and camels, is convincing proof of the strength-giving properties of vegetable food."

"If we judge from the construction of the human body, the natural food of man is not flesh-meat, but fruits, roots, cereals, and vegetables; that, in a word, man is not carnivorous, but frugivorous."

"Picturing to yourselves all that is meant by the slaughter-house… I ask you if it is possible to reconcile the idea of it… with the idea of progress, of refinement, and of gentleness (or humanity)? In my opinion they are irreconcileable."

"Man at present has no just claim to regard himself as the worthy Head of the animal world."

"Strange as it is, in this age of so-called humanity and enlightenment, that society, when brought face to face with the grave accusation of indifference to life, to the terrible wrongs inflicted on the harmless non-human races, is yet content to go on as before; it does not trouble itself in the slightest degree to stop the barbarisms and frightful sufferings inflicted upon what it is pleased to term 'the brutes' and 'the beasts;' it does not concern itself to enquire into the unquestionable atrocities practised in the rearing, transport and slaughter of the countless thousands of harmless victims who are daily sacrificed for the pleasures of the palate."

"Man by nature is not a carnivorous but a frugivorous animal, and … a diet composed of fruits, pulses, grains and nuts contains all that is necessary for the maintenance of Force and Caloric."

"Only the worshippers of the old world creed based on the maxim that 'might is right' could attempt to justify their position."

"As is the language, so is the idea."

"The passion for 'sport,' the killing and wounding industries, is no other than a relic of the past struggle for existence, destined to be regarded with horror under higher and happier civilization."

"The savage is not a sportsman, hunting is his business, not his amusement; his excuse is, that he acts from necessity."

"The sentiment that spares the sheep and the deer will not sacrifice men."

"The emancipation of woman should be accompanied by hostility towards deeds of violence, and by the spread of the instinct of pity and mercy. Let women discountenance every act of cruelty under whatever disguise, or upon whatever pretence, and it will become impossible, or at all events much rarer than now."

"Through her behind the scenes work and steady influence Alice Drakoules was seen as a 'spiritual mother' of the humanitarian movement"

"When we design AI systems, we’re not just making technical choices. We’re making moral and philosophical decisions."

"In an analogy to AI,the risks of harm posed by AI: Research shows women, minorities, and marginalized groups tend to get fewer options or opportunities in systems driven by AI models."

"The problem, is that a lot of this harm and unfairness is baked in: it’s in the training data, in the models we chose, and in the trade-offs we incorporate into the AI system. Existing ethical problems only get magnified by the model."

"philosophers and computer scientists, and the goal is to help industry. That means corporations as well as startups, or organizations like law enforcement or hospitals, to develop and deploy AI systems responsibly and ethically,"

"A lot of the companies come to us and say, ‘Here’s a model that we are planning to use. Is this fair?’"

"The biggest risk that AI holds comes from the fact that it is systematic and efficient. So the risk is, if you create a bad system, it is systematically and efficiently bad."

"But the flip side of it is that if you create a good system that is better than now, it [will be] systematically and efficiently good, and will make it systematically and efficiently better than now."

"If we haven’t yet, we have to face the fact that the world is a massively unethical place, and we create a ton of suffering, needless suffering. Any shift is an opportunity to fix some of those [problems], and any shift holds the risk that we will just create more."

"Responsible AI is artificial intelligence that must be designed responsibly by humans in a way that respects human values and the environment, throughout the systems’ life cycle. All stakeholders involved must be responsible."

"Like biologists, who have been concerned about ethics for years and have banned human cloning, for example, IT professionals cannot ignore responsibility. It is an essential element in the regulation of AI. They must be aware that what they are doing is not neutral and that the consequences and risks can be significant."

"A few days ago, Google CEO Sundar Pichai shared his concerns about AI being “badly deployed” and said that “generative AI [should] be regulated like nuclear weapons”."

"Artificial intelligence is constantly progressing and its uniqueness lies in the rapid pace at which it is evolving and in the fact that, unlike other scientific fields, industrialists, particularly those in Silicon Valley with their considerable financial resources, are playing a major role in research. The time between design, development and commercial deployment is very short. We’re no longer talking about the timeframe we were accustomed to, where several years elapsed between mainly academic research and industrial commercialization. This speed – you could call it a race between the designers of these systems – is changing society faster than our ability to understand and assimilate the challenges of this economic and social transformation."

"Let’s take a concrete example: Open AI produced and rapidly launched ChatGPT, and several million users connected to it on day one. This technology, which now makes it possible to produce speech resembling human speech, was not designed for any particular application. Tomorrow, it could create images and videos and be even more convincing and more powerful. It raises questions about ethics. And ethics has a much longer timeframe. We need to take the time to reflect on the foundations of algorithmic systems, their consequences, and the values they may call into question. The socio-economic stakes are therefore twofold."

"Second challenge: the legislative and legal issue. We need to agree on the legal definition of artificial intelligence, which is supposed to simulate human intelligence. In order to legislate, we need an operational definition of what this term covers, and we need to define human responsibilities if legislation is to be effective."

"It’s not about pausing AI, but about pausing the development of systems more powerful than ChatGPT4. I signed this moratorium, but that doesn’t mean I agree with every word or every idea, and far less with every signatory. My goal was to make people aware that there was a problem. It’s not about being negative towards artificial intelligence, but of raising awareness about how to develop and use these technologies. This is the whole idea behind responsibility. It’s important that we stop today and raise the red card, and ask our democratic societies the right questions: what is it that we are doing? Should we put a stop to generative systems? The moratorium will certainly not be followed by action and a six-month break would not change the situation, but it was essential to raise awareness among the general public and decision-makers, and it worked."

"We now need to build on this success and make some constructive proposals. I also signed another petition, much less publicized, which proposes elements to be included in future regulations."

"Several schemes already exist. In China, a draft regulation specifically on generative AI systems was recently published. We can draw some inspiration from this. At European level, the AI Act currently being drafted offers a legislative framework that is solid but still needs to be clarified, particularly as regards liability issues, and it will only come into force in about two years."

"From 2018 to 2020, I belonged to the High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, which gave the European Commission recommendations for trustworthy AI. I am a member of the French National Pilot Committee for Digital Ethics and co-chair of the Responsible AI Working Group of the Global Partnership in AI. I am also continuing my research work, particularly on the issues of machine learning and human-computer interaction. Therefore, I naturally wanted to apply this expertise in a practical context with Positive AI."

"This is a positive initiative, because companies are anticipating future legislative constraints and voluntarily taking on their share of responsibility in order to establish the necessary mechanisms and processes that will make AI systems compatible, reliable, robust and respectful of fundamental values (security, privacy, human control, etc.). I would also encourage them to carry out research in order to master and understand the subject, and produce responsibly. They are the most important contributors where these issues are concerned. And the standards that they are going to define, test and disseminate in order to certify one system or another are valuable and practical tools on which the AI Act can be based."

"For the time being, I and the two other members on the panel of experts, Bertrand Braunschweig and Caroline Lequesne Roth, have given our opinion on the Positive AI reference framework that has been defined, shared our criticisms and identified shortcomings. We are very curious and enthusiastic about following this label and seeing how it evolves."

"I have indeed striven to live among you, rather as an elder brother, not perhaps in years, but in thought and feeling, and far more pleasant to me is this fraternal relation than the assumption of a dignity rather inspiring awe than love, and repulsing and repelling instead of attracting. I thank God that we live under different conditions from those that prevail in many other countries. Abroad there often exist conditions that raise barriers between the bishop and his clergy, and between the priest and his people. I thank God that it is different here, and that the relationship is nearer that of father and brother. Yet I am satisfied that the body of the priesthood of the old world show no greater reverence for their bishops or their flocks to the priests than is shown in the new world."

"Honor the teachers that open the mind."

"Fear history, for it respects no secrets."

"We can have our econ ‘hats’ on with some theory in mind, but without a deep understanding of the context and constraints in the particular environment you're working in, it's hard to design interventions that might be useful"

"Everyone has their own path to finding their passion and, for some, that may be longer than for others."

"Yeah, absolutely. I’m actually Kenyan, by the way. So I was born and raised there, which is why I do research there. But yes, I’ve been to them several times. In fact, I was just there, I was there in February. Yeah. I mean, they’re not rich people, right? This is rural Kenya. They’re pretty poor. They’re mostly growing and eating maize. That’s the main staple of the whole country. A lot of them might not eat much meat a year, maybe at Christmas."

"I am a Professor by training and calling—it means I take the part about really understanding what we learn from literature seriously, with real devotion. I tell my own stories based on the stories I read in order to help others grow and learn, and to help me grow and learn too"

""The Sound of a Silenced Letter' **https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/SCL/article/view/33178.Her article,"

"“It helps, from time to time, to change media because, sometimes, when one is comfortable with one, you can get stuck. But you change, you spread out ideas and are bound to see growth.”"

"“My greatest achievement is that I am healthy, I am alive and I am still able to practise my art.”"

"“I like doing this, it is occupational therapy for me, and I cannot get tired of waking up every morning and doing it.”"

"“The whole thought of painting is a strange one… most people want you to put it down in words, but the truth is if I could tell it, then I wouldn’t paint it. Therefore, to start explaining my paintings becomes ridiculous! It’s about nature and the many parts of it. I normally don’t tell a story as such. It is a very difficult thing to put your feelings into words. In my art I precisely have the joy of doing just a beautiful thing.”"

"“I always say I’m not born of tech. I did not start my career in tech — I began working at nonprofits, public policy organizations, and even as an economist. That breadth of experience gives me a perspective on technology that goes beyond the usual tech world.”"

"“When I joined Accenture for responsible AI, I saw the problem as a series of quantitative social science challenges. It was an amazing opportunity to think big, think globally, and start solving big problems"

"With generative AI, the public can now simply ask, ‘Why is it that when I ask for five scientists, I only get men?’ and that’s where change begins"

"In my TED talk, I argued that it’s not about building trustworthy tech. It’s about creating tools so that people can make choices for themselves — tools that let us shift the conversation on what technology should be"