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Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026

anthropic.com

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Re: Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026

#81

Post by sajithdilshan »

tedsanders wrote: post #17

Meta: The potential proliferation of biological weapons is serious. Millions could die. It's easy to joke about before it happens, but try to imagine how this thread might look after the successful deployment of a biological weapon by a rogue state or non-state actor. I encourage you to take this topic seriously and contribute posts that add new information or perspectives to the discussion. (I myself think the odds…

I don't think knowing how to build a bio weapon means one could actually build a bio weapon. It's like saying knowing how to build a nuclear weapon can easily lead to building a nuclear weapon.

Advanced machinery and safety precaution is needed to engineer a virus or a bacteria to be a bio weapon. It's not something you can do in your tool shed at the moment. Also one would need lethal viruses to even start with and that's not something you can order off of amazon. Further, even to build a chemical weapon, the compounds needed are strictly controlled almost in every country and I would assume any suspicious purchase or order would immediately raise a flag or alert in national security service in respective country.

Re: Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026

#82

Post by genxy »

jerf wrote: post #58
genxy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop murdering ants.

Mmmm, even ignoring the age issue, I don't think we can call this "murder". At most it was negligent formicacide. I have to admit I posted this just so I could use the word(?) "formicacide". It seems an opportunity unlikely to arise again anytime soon.

You are absolved.

Re: Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026

#83

Post by groby_b »

chucksta wrote: post #44
alansaber wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like a dirty nuke you need a non-trivial amount of resources to fabricate a bioweapon, which would surely be noticed.

They just found a hidden biolab in US earlier in the year which was connected to one found in 2023.

The details on the lab are (understandably and simultaneously frustratingly) quite sparse.

But it's worth keeping in mind that theoretically, the mold on that cucumber in your fridge constitutes some sort of biolab. The main released criteria about those lab that raised alarm was the presence of specimens, which does not imply any capability of creating a weaponized strain.

It's still alarming, but (at least in my opinion), still doesn't prove an effective bioweapon is buildable in a small-scale operation.

Georgetown has a good article on the general problems with our current "AI and bioweapons" dialog: https://gjia.georgetown.edu/science-technology/rethinking-th...

Without a whole lot of tacit knowledge no LLM can provide you, bioweapons are still pretty much out of range for most of the population. Doesn't mean we should ignore the problem, but a more reasoned approach would stand to benefit everybody.

Re: Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026

#85

Post by Scea91 »

BobbyJo wrote: post #69
Scea91 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2) Unintentional side-effect affecting millions of Vietnamese people? Hundreds od thousands of children born with birth defects.

Is your argument that the resulting birth defects were intentional? If not, I'm not sure where you're going with your response.

The civilian cost was intentionally not part of the equation. The toxic effects were known and the numbers show that it was not a few isolated accidents but a intentional disregard for the human cost.

Re: Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026

#86

Post by salawat »

aqme28 wrote: post #34
tredre3 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you emphasize rogue and non-state actors. It seems equally likely to me that it would be done by America. America is the only country who deployed nukes (Japan) and chemical weapons (Vietnam) on massive scales. I can agree that access to bioengineering tooling is easier and cheaper than ever, and thus eventually it stands to reason that a nobody in his basement could engineer a lethal novel virus and…

We're not there quite yet, but I think within the decade at this pace it may be possible to create targeted bioweapons for purposes of targeted assassination or genocide. It's horrifying, but a world in which everyone has a superintelligence is a world where that will sometimes happen.

Either everyone can afford it, or no one can. Choose well.

Re: Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026

#87

Post by 14u2c »

AustinDev wrote: post #73
tedsanders wrote: post #17

Meta: The potential proliferation of biological weapons is serious. Millions could die. It's easy to joke about before it happens, but try to imagine how this thread might look after the successful deployment of a biological weapon by a rogue state or non-state actor. I encourage you to take this topic seriously and contribute posts that add new information or perspectives to the discussion. (I myself think the odds…

How probable do you think it would be that a layman following ChatGPT's bio weapon instructions would just blow themselves up or poison themselves? It's not like positive pressure environments and suits are very common let alone all the other gear you'd need to safely synthesize arbitrary organic molecules. If a rogue state-level actor is doing this then why wouldn't they just kidnap a scientist and hold their family…

Why does it have to be a layman? The 2001 anthrax attacks are believe to have been carried out by an insider to the field (senior biodefense researcher). Such tools could potentially be accelerants for similar individuals?

Re: Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026

#88

Post by m-hodges »

> We discovered that Moonshot AI, the company that produces the Kimi family of models, silently forwarded customer requests to Claude, instead of processing them using Kimi. Moonshot then displayed Claude’s responses to users. These users thought they were using a Kimi model, but received responses from Claude instead.

> DeepSeek also silently relayed exchanges to Claude without informing DeepSeek customers.

> MiniMax built its own proxy network service through a shell company. This shell company has no obvious links to MiniMax and does not disclose its relationship to its parent company. This shell proxy network service only offers access to models developed by Anthropic and OpenAI. The service does not offer access to any Chinese models, including Minimax’s own.

Re: Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026

#89

Post by theptip »

tredre3 wrote: post #27
tedsanders wrote: post #17

Meta: The potential proliferation of biological weapons is serious. Millions could die. It's easy to joke about before it happens, but try to imagine how this thread might look after the successful deployment of a biological weapon by a rogue state or non-state actor. I encourage you to take this topic seriously and contribute posts that add new information or perspectives to the discussion. (I myself think the odds…

I don't know why you emphasize rogue and non-state actors. It seems equally likely to me that it would be done by America. America is the only country who deployed nukes (Japan) and chemical weapons (Vietnam) on massive scales. I can agree that access to bioengineering tooling is easier and cheaper than ever, and thus eventually it stands to reason that a nobody in his basement could engineer a lethal novel virus and…

State actors already have the resources to do this. The disruption is from actors where the normal deterrence ladders don’t apply.

Re: Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026

#90

Post by tuesdaynight »

bix6 wrote: post #16

I’m so curious how they monitor users. Like that person the other day talking about Claude helping with their torrent stack, will Anthropic report them for breaking the law?

Yes. There were cases already where a person asked about killing someone and then Anthropic/OpenAI warned the police about it. If I'm not mistaken, it was not in the USA only
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