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AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?

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Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?

#21

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #13

Something 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…

Every person's utopia is someone else's dystopia and vice versa. What you've described is clearly some peoples (ie. already billionaires) version of the best possible world. Not so much for the rest of us though...

Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?

#22

Post by [deleted] »

gtowey wrote: post #18
andsoitis wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?

#23

Post by demibabs »

estearum wrote: post #5
timr wrote: post #4

The 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.

Would they not be like “hmmm this one looks kinda similar to a known virus”

They really just synthesize anything for you?

Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?

#25

Post by estearum »

demibabs wrote: post #23
estearum wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

Would they not be like “hmmm this one looks kinda similar to a known virus” They really just synthesize anything for you?

I'm sure some of them would, but they're not required by law to do so. And historically the way you'd do this is by actual fragment/substring matches. But these are novel viruses now. So what you really want to do is try to predict whether a novel genome is pathogenic... which is itself obviously a very hard technical problem.

Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?

#26

Post by demibabs »

andsoitis wrote: post #15
acjohnson55 wrote: post #13

Something 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…

Fewer as in the size of an individual group, even though the total number of people who could find themselves in such a group is greater.

Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?

#27

Post by idontwantthis »

hoppp wrote: post #19

The 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.

That’s what I’m thinking. If we can restrict EUV technology to the West then why can’t we restrict DNA manufacturing? Not to the West in this case but to capable governments like with Nuclear power.

Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?

#28

Post by [deleted] »

estearum wrote: post #5
timr wrote: post #4

The 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.

[deleted]

Re: AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?

#30

Post by dgellow »

consensus1 wrote: post #12
estearum wrote: post #5

Earlier 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.

That’s one interesting way to generate demand for AI vendors if the AI bet doesn’t pay off /s
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