Comment by glub
14 hours ago
And all of this information has been available on the open web way before LLMs.
I'd wager it's likely easier for an average person to do this with Tor browser than it is to get an LLM to help them with it. Even ones that Dario calls dangerous.
You are right that it’s easier to do this via Tor than an LLM. Those are the safeguards…
So what's the fuss about then? Is the idea that a Chinese company will release a model that will have no safeguards? For what purpose?
Basic safeguards are all that's required, and they've been there in every usable model since GPT-2, including Chinese models that are supposedly "unsafe".
Or are we saying that some lunatics will start training their own models, spin up a GPU cluster, run some abliteration workflow, or learn how to jailbreak?
That would be a very dedicated person. And dedicated person doesn't need an LLM. So where are they?
Yes, that is exactly Dario's concern. Either one of the US labs or one of the Chinese ones will eventually release something with insufficient safety controls for its power level because it gives them slightly better user retention (look how much complaining there is about current frontier models, especially Fable, rejecting requests). Regulation or consortium is how you avoid the prisoner's dilemma.
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The bioweapons argument is one of the favorites used by these con artists and dreamed up by their PR team.
Except Bioweapons already existed before LLMs, Adversarial governments already have them, they are already easy to make. You could use the same bullshit argument for why we need to ban libraries, books, or require a license to buy an internet connection.
An undergrad bio student with some lab experience can do some effing terrifying things with about $20k in equipment and time and access to some papers and a library. AI is not needed, but it might help accelerate the research.
Not going to go into it but I studied biology. It’s all out there. It’s easier than you think.
It hasn’t happened yet because… nobody has done it. That’s the answer. There is no policeable physics based barrier like there is with nukes and fissile material. Biology is scarier than nukes. One attack could have a much larger body count than even a big H-bomb.
It’s the kind of thing that makes me wonder about quantum immortality, the idea that we are just in the timeline where we exist.
I love watching NileRed/NileBlue on youtube - crazy chemist that does a lot of insane stuff. While it's obvious that he's very smart and probably way above the average, his education is still nothing that probably millions of people don't have:
> Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry with a minor in pharmacology
Watching him explain things has made me realize that knowing how to manufacture a very dangerous thing probably requires attending some classes and knowing how to read a paper. And the way he just casually orders dangerous materials makes me feel like there are just online stores with 2-day shipping after you upload your ID or something.
It also made me think that lack of specialized education would get me nowhere if I wanted to replicate whatever he's doing, even if an LLM guided me step-by-step, because I'd probably do something stupid (or AI would miss a crucial instruction/hallucinate) and kill myself first.
So my opinion on this is that people who could pose any danger were already posing it before LLMs and LLMs won't materially change that.
That’s not entirely true though, right? There have been plenty of bioweapon attacks
Ex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack