Comment by Barrin92
1 day ago
>Bill Gates sounded like a nontechnical goofball in his Ezra Klein interview where he basically just screamed that the Terminator is real.
I saw that episode too and he genuinely looked completely out of it, even in terms of his temperament and how he was coming at Klein for putting common questions in front of him, some people are genuinely starting to lose it.
I also found the whole debate about cyber-security and 'rogue' software so bizarre because dangerous malware isn't a new thing, and it's often dangerous not because it's intelligent but just the opposite, because it's tiny, viral and fast. Which describes everything that kills humanity in far larger numbers than anything complex, big and intelligent
Wasn't Bill Gates mostly just saying terrorists could use AI to build a bioweapon? That sounds legit to me.
It's not "legit", it's pointless scaremongering about entirely speculative future dynamics. Current LLMs can't "build" anything novel in this broad space. What if future AIs make it a lot easier for researchers to defend against plausible bioweapons? That's also reasonably possible, and would be a reason to deploy bio-capable AIs more broadly (with meaningful safeguards of course. But these are comparatively cheap because worthwhile bio research is resource-intensive already). At the very least, it'd be nice to have an AI model that doesn't immediately refuse to answer questions about junior-high Biology class.
So a terrorist can't use a local llm to help grow anthrax? That is not farfetched at all.
AI democratized the knowledge needed to build bioweapons. Like how with a 3d printer anyone can build a gun with no expertise.
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It only sounds legit to people who don't understand biology and haven't done advanced laboratory work. Sort of like Michael Crichton novels: superficially plausible but not grounded in any real science.
I see no actual argument here.
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terrorists can also use annas archive, scihub and equipment they order on Alibaba to build bioweapons and I don't see him losing his mind over those
if you're trying to build a bioweapon shockingly enough the bottleneck is... the laboratory work. What on earth is 'legit' about stringing words together that sound scary, you can't just iterate 'ai bioweapon cyber' in a sentence over and over as if that adds up to actual evidence for an increased risk of any threat. well tbf you can technically because apparently it freaks a lot of podcast listeners out
As a thought experiment imagine you have a biochemical PhD expert on the phone with you giving you step by step instructions on how to grow some dangerous biotoxin, giving you feedback in real time and helping you troubleshoot. Would you be more successful with this expert than you'd be on your own?
Now imagine anyone can call that expert for free at any time.
Maybe the AI isn't quite there with biology knowledge yet (doubtful), but it is a matter of time.
How is that not a real risk?
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Synthesizing complex information from a range of textbooks enough to build bioweapons is cognitively impenetrable for the vast majority of people. Having the AI synthesize this information into a step-by-step recipe to follow is within the capabilities of most motivated individuals.