Comment by altcognito
6 hours ago
> Non-example 2: There are worries about AI-facilitated biological weapons. I haven’t seen any evidence that’s happening.
I think this is a good example of poor risk management reasoning. there is evidence bioengineering is already happening. No, nobody is going to announce when somebody has decided to use these tools (even if isn’t an LLM) to bioengineer a weapon. Are the tools power enough to do so? Not sure.
But I’m just ambivalent. It’s probably bad. But there’s nothing to do about it. We’ve really only just pulled back the lid on Pandora’s box.
People have had the capability to spread already existing biological weapons for decades. Sometimes they even do (anthrax in the post). What’s changed?
You needed a team of scientists and state funding to make superbugs, not a 12 year old or an angry misanthrope.
> there is evidence bioengineering is already happening
Mind sharing this evidence with us?
Does https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30698803 count?
No, it's not. And it's the kind of evidence that doesn't help and rather confuse. It's not even clear from the article whether an LLM or a dedicated model were used for this purpose.
Also
> That is, I'm not sure that anyone needs to deploy a new compound in order to wreak havoc - they can save themselves a lot of trouble by just making Sarin or VX, God help us.
We already have toxic nerve agents that are largely available for state actors and possibly available for individuals. If you have decided, as a human, to make great harm, you can already do that.