Comment by thewebguyd
2 days ago
Its the same argument we saw in the early 2000s and the early internet. When the anarchist cookbook and other similar materials were circulating online there was a big panic over democratized terrorism, and a push for regulation at the ISP level.
Turns out that didn't play out as everyone feared because, well, the instructions themselves aren't useful unless you also have a lab, precursor chemicals, and everything else actually needed to make a weapon. Same back then as it is today.
Any information or instructions an LLM can surface, a sufficiently motivated bad actor can and will also find themselves because the information is already online, both on the clear net and dark web.
I think the reality also is that there just isn't many people who want to do stuff like this. Like the reality is that a guy with 200 in cash could put together a shitty walmart drone with a pipe bomb attached and terrorize more or less any event he wanted. Maybe a llm that could talk you through every step involved would make it more common but it's easy enough I kinda doubt that
This is the right answer. There's a ton of easy low hanging fruit ways to do absolutely horrible evil things with high potential body counts. I could sit here and brainstorm dozens.
The right answer conflicts with people's cynical views about other people. The dissonance is incredible, and it's one of those areas where even the most analytically intelligent people are just as susceptible. To step back and see the bigger picture requires exercising many other skills and faculties, like empathy, self-awareness about our fears, and constant reflection on history--bad things do happen, more often than we realize and often right under our noses, but not in the way or for the reasons we tend to blithely assume. The things that go well and demonstrate our common humaneness and how well civilization works tend to be taken for granted or just go unseen and unrecognized. I share in the dissonance, but on my better days I like to think I'm a little better than average at remembering and reflecting on it.
1 reply →
Occasionally we see people motivated to do some of those things, though. And when they're not also complete idiots, they can cause big problems.
What would someone like the Tsarnaev brothers be able to do with the power of an unrestricted LLM? Well-financed cartels? Organized terrorist groups?
Yes, there used to be an uproar about stuff like the anarchists cookbook... and people did attempt some of the things it outlined. The saving grace is that many of the things in that book were just wrong anyway. They likely served as unhelpful misdirection as much or more than they were dangerous. Unfortunately, LLMs are a lot more accurate and helpful.
3 replies →