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Comment by sneak

5 days ago

I want everyone in the world to be able to perform unlimited cutting edge research on any topic at the maximum thinking level, instantly.

The reason we are not being attacked is not lack of technology access.

11 comments

sneak

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dyauspitr  5 days ago

It is an access issue. If you could get step by step instructions on how to modify a virus so it kills all people over 6ft you bet your ass there would be people attempting it.

  • JumpCrisscross  5 days ago

    > It is an access issue

    Column A, Column B. Building a small explosive device isn't hard. Building a million is very difficult, doing it covertly virtually impossible without the resources of a nation-state.

    The problem with biologics is the self-assembly and replication machinery comes for "free." So the numpties who might otherwise blow up a trash can [1] now have a real chance of taking out a million people.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_New_York_and_New_Jersey_b...

    • kiv_apple  12 hours ago

      The problem with biologics is that you cannot build a virus in your garage. You need a lab. AI will give your recipe, but you still need a lot of money and cooperation of other people (and if you have so, you could hire human biologist in pre-AI era).

      Also AI makes mistakes. If you ever coded with AI agent you know that loop "write trash => compile => fix compilation errors => repeat" (if there are no compilation errors, there are definitely logic errors to be fixed). In real world cost of attempt is huge. You need a lot of money and you risk to draw a lot of attention if you perform long series of iterative experiments to create working virus.

      In case with bomb it means that even if you have AI which gives you recipe of the bomb, but you will explode your garage and yourself with a decent chance. So you probably need to setup a good experimental pipeline (hardened lab where you can try different formulas and see that happens without being killed) if you want to go beyond publicly known explosives available in pre-AI era to anyone who read school/university chemistry books. And this also requires resources and draws attention.

      People extrapolate programming experience (the area where experiments are cheap, cannot kill you and provide detailed feedback what went wrong) to real life.

    • gck1  5 days ago

      They would still have to procure things that would (I hope) light up many screens before they're able to. And such numpties are probably already monitored, or in prison for some other stupid life decision.

      I also would like to hope that people that are likely to do such things are probably:

      A) don't know how to break even the most basic guardrails of models

      B) already in glasswings project

      To prove point B - Theranos existed.

      1 reply →

  • sneak  5 days ago

    If that were possible, they would already be attempting it with the same level of ability as if they didn’t have access to a text file generator app. It is not about access to the information.

    All of this “guardrails” handwringing is nonsense. These things output text. Are you for censorship of a book written by a biotechnology expert that gives out the exact same information?

  • debesyla  5 days ago

    I guess in this theoretical "AI makes weapon" scenario one could use the same AI to make defences too?

    // Claude, make antiviral nanobots that defend me from 6ft virus. Make no mistakes.

    • dyauspitr  5 days ago

      I don’t know if you’re being silly but it is orders of magnitudes easier to modify an existing virus to selectively target certain snps than make “antiviral nanobots”

      1 reply →