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I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

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Re: I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

#121

Post by UncleMeat »

fergal_reid wrote: post #46

I am not a biology person, but, candidly, this is a bad article, because the author is generalizing from the properties of viruses that tend to arise naturally, and using this to argue about the properties of deliberately designed viruses. Firstly, it's not even clear that naturally occuring viruses can't be extremely lethal. There are examples (eg black death). Even the existence of rare examples should be concernin…

> Firstly, it's not even clear that naturally occurring viruses can't be extremely lethal. There are examples (eg black death).

The plague is not actually that easily transmitted. Basic social hygiene prevents it. It is still around and causes very nearly zero problem today.

Re: I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

#122

Post by fergal_reid »

UncleMeat wrote: post #121
fergal_reid wrote: post #46

I am not a biology person, but, candidly, this is a bad article, because the author is generalizing from the properties of viruses that tend to arise naturally, and using this to argue about the properties of deliberately designed viruses. Firstly, it's not even clear that naturally occuring viruses can't be extremely lethal. There are examples (eg black death). Even the existence of rare examples should be concernin…

> Firstly, it's not even clear that naturally occurring viruses can't be extremely lethal. There are examples (eg black death). The plague is not actually that easily transmitted. Basic social hygiene prevents it. It is still around and causes very nearly zero problem today.

I think you are misunderstanding my point.

The technology to prevent plague was beyond the population at the time.

"Just use basic hygiene" is useless to a population who has no understanding of what that means.

It was a real virus that had very high mortality.

This makes it a serious counterpoint for people who argue such things can't be created in future.

"The AI designed killer virus using new science turned out to be not that easily transmitted, basic dynamically reprogrammable mrna implants easily prevents it, shame about the 95% who died"

Re: I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

#123

Post by woopwoop »

alevskaya wrote: post #89
woopwoop wrote: post #50

The author seems to be arguing that it is biologically impossible or something to have a virus with the same transmission properties as COVID but higher virulence. I don't understand what principle he is invoking to make this claim.

Because fatality and virulence stand in fundamental tension with each other when it comes to epidemiology. You can't magic that tension away or just invent other incompatible properties of a hypothetical virus (stealth, latency, virulence, fatality, etc etc etc) just because you want to tell a ghost story. Biology: (immunology, cell biology, virology) impose constraints!

What do you think the word virulence means?

Re: I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

#124

Post by [deleted] »

janalsncm wrote: post #27

> When people believe that AI could figure this out on its own, without first running extensive and expensive basic science experiments, they have left the realm of science and have entered what can only be described as religion. I strongly agree with this. Too many people have the Arthur C Clarke quote infecting their brains. So much of science is contingent on the physical world and cannot be determined from first…

[deleted]

Re: I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

#125

Post by crazygringo »

mikestylz wrote: post #82
crazygringo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we really need for such a statement is concrete physical evidence that a virus is simply incapable of having such facilities. A major focus of the article is about the fundamental tradeoffs in how viruses operate. Was that not enough for you?

It is not, because we should not expect a manufactured technology to behave exactly as an evolved one. My understanding is there is not much incentive for a virus to kill off all its hosts. When they do it is largely an accident, and it is not uncommon for a severe virus to eventually get replaced by a less virulent and thus more successful strain. It's pretty hard to hill-climb evolution to such a point since the vi…

I'm not sure what the point of your comment is then, because there are unknown unknowns in literally everything.

The main point of the article has nothing to do with manufactured technology vs evolved technology. It is fundamentally about the tradeoffs involved in viruses spreading period. I think you either continue to misunderstand the article, or set such an epistemologically high bar for arguments that nothing can ever satisfy you -- which then has nothing whatsoever to do with this specific article.

Re: I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

#126

Post by UncleMeat »

fergal_reid wrote: post #122
UncleMeat wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Firstly, it's not even clear that naturally occurring viruses can't be extremely lethal. There are examples (eg black death). The plague is not actually that easily transmitted. Basic social hygiene prevents it. It is still around and causes very nearly zero problem today.

I think you are misunderstanding my point. The technology to prevent plague was beyond the population at the time. "Just use basic hygiene" is useless to a population who has no understanding of what that means. It was a real virus that had very high mortality. This makes it a serious counterpoint for people who argue such things can't be created in future. "The AI designed killer virus using new science turned out t…

What I am saying is that it is meaningless to use the plague as evidence for such a death toll of a virus in the future since conditions which are no longer present were a prerequisite for its death toll.

Re: I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

#127

Post by fsiefken »

janalsncm wrote: post #27

> When people believe that AI could figure this out on its own, without first running extensive and expensive basic science experiments, they have left the realm of science and have entered what can only be described as religion. I strongly agree with this. Too many people have the Arthur C Clarke quote infecting their brains. So much of science is contingent on the physical world and cannot be determined from first…

This I read yesterday on LinkedIn, so a whole lot is already possible.

---

Markus J. Buehler McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT; Co-Founder & CTO at Unreasonable Labs; AI-Driven Scientific Discovery

Astra is an incredible world builder and explorer, and can invent its own scientific instruments - crossing a game-changing threshold: it turned a few images of a biological microstructure into a full-blown metamaterials lab, then used its own creation to discover a design with ~2.1x the reference work-to-failure/peak-strength ratio. Metamaterials are some of the most complex materials we can engineer. Their properties come from deep architectural complexity - struts, cells, disorder, and hierarchy arranged across multiple length scales determine how the material deforms, absorbs energy, and fails. Designing them means searching a geometric space far too large for "intuition" alone. In this experiment we handed an AI agent that entire problem end-to-end, from image, to simulating the physics, to fabrication-ready geometry.

We started with an image of hierarchical, biological architecture; Astra then built a complete 3D metamaterial studio: editable geometries, multiple levels of hierarchy, disorder, gradients, a complete physics simulator featuring linear and nonlinear material responses, deformation and fracture experiments (with replay), and STL export for 3D printing.

Then we asked the agent to use the app it created to search for a high work-to-failure/peak-strength ratio. Among the candidates, the leading design reached approximately 2.1x the reference ratio.

The movie follows the structures through deformation and fracture, connects their designs to the property map, and shows the finalist assembled geometrically into a connected multi-scale material.

Re: I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

#128

Post by burnt-resistor »

Unintentional consequences or accidents enabled by technological/AI ubiquity is the more probable existential threat. We might accidentally poison ourselves, harm infrastructure or supply chain(s) in some very damaging manner, or do something else unwise that isn't readily apparent due to increasing system complexity.

Re: I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus

#129

Post by colingauvin »

busyant wrote: post #88
colingauvin wrote: post #43

Oh my God THANK YOU. I do not have the words how tired I am of hearing tech people and economists talk about biology.

As a biologist whose PhD research was on the genetics of microbial pathogens, I am far more concerned than the author. I think he trots out a lot of straw-man arguments (e.g., teenager making the weapon, "super"virus, etc.). Those scenarios are purposely far-fetched so that he can ridicule them and thereby leave the impression that all the AI/bioweapon concerns are similarly far-fetched. He spends a lot of "tokens" d…

Not to discredit your opinion here, but will just point out I am also a PhD biochemist who has worked on viruses, so hopefully our credentials cancel. :)
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