[deleted]
AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?
11–20 of 157 posts
Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?
#12The design was never the hard part. You still have to make the thing. Designing a modifcation to an existing virus is perhaps more achievable, but the implementation is still the hard part.
You can literally send an email to one of hundreds of companies that do exactly this. They have no way of knowing whether you're asking them to synthesize a virus or a drug candidate or what.
One of the easiest and most effective AI regulations would be to simply require all these labs to run all incoming requests through a suite of the most advanced models asking if the request is likely to be a pathogenic agent.
Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?
#13Something I've been worried about for years is the proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people, in potentially irreversible ways. Combined with automation, this is a recipe for disaster. We're clearly lacking in the ability to regulate and govern ourselves, and real world market forces (as opposed to the hypothetical free market) encourage reckless aggressiveness at the level of companies and countries.
Although, I must admit, as a doomer, I'm pleasantly surprised things aren't already worse than they are.
Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can literally send an email to one of hundreds of companies that do exactly this. They have no way of knowing whether you're asking them to synthesize a virus or a drug candidate or what.
Yes in much the same way you can literally build a rocket and go to the moon. You may be skipping a few of the involved steps.
What involved steps are those?
You email the RNA strand (a text file) to a lab along with some money. The lab converts that information into a physical object (read: virus) and sends it back to you in the mail.
What step is missing?
Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?
#15Something I've been worried about for years is the proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people, in potentially irreversible ways. Combined with automation, this is a recipe for disaster. We're clearly lacking in the ability to regulate and govern ourselves, and real world market forces (as opposed to the hypothetical fr…
> proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people
did you mean greater number of people with less resources?
EDIT: thanks to others that point out how you can interpret this differently, which I think is: "it is now easier for smaller teams with fewer resources" rather than my original interpretation of "power is now concentrated so that fewer people can do this than before"
Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can literally send an email to one of hundreds of companies that do exactly this. They have no way of knowing whether you're asking them to synthesize a virus or a drug candidate or what.
One of the easiest and most effective AI regulations would be to simply require all these labs to run all incoming requests through a suite of the most advanced models asking if the request is likely to be a pathogenic agent.
Yes probably true. Unfortunately we need only one defector lab to severely degrade the overall effectiveness of this approach (leaving aside the effectiveness of the detection models themselves).
Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?
#17Something I've been worried about for years is the proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people, in potentially irreversible ways. Combined with automation, this is a recipe for disaster. We're clearly lacking in the ability to regulate and govern ourselves, and real world market forces (as opposed to the hypothetical fr…
> proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people did you mean greater number of people with less resources? EDIT: thanks to others that point out how you can interpret this differently, which I think is: "it is now easier for smaller teams with fewer resources" rather than my original interpretation of "power is now concen…
I had the same reaction, but I think they meant fewer as in "requires less consensus-building to wield meaningful power." Used to have to convince lots of people to go to war in order to kill a couple million people. Fast approaching a one- or two-man weekend project.
Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?
#18Something I've been worried about for years is the proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people, in potentially irreversible ways. Combined with automation, this is a recipe for disaster. We're clearly lacking in the ability to regulate and govern ourselves, and real world market forces (as opposed to the hypothetical fr…
> proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people did you mean greater number of people with less resources? EDIT: thanks to others that point out how you can interpret this differently, which I think is: "it is now easier for smaller teams with fewer resources" rather than my original interpretation of "power is now concen…
No, I think they mean that it used to take a giant lab full of specialists with lots of funding to do lots of damage before.
Now, the worry is a lone nut in a basement with no money could pull off an act of bio terrorism.
Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?
#19The regulation at the DNA Printer level works I think, as long as nobody invents a good at home DNA printer, but if they do that there is no need for custom viruses, somebody can take an existing one that is known to be deadly and just print it.
Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?
#20[flagged]