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OpenAI blog post: https://openai.com/research/building-an-early-warning-system-for-llm-aided-biological-threat-creation

Orange discuss: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39207291

I don't have any particular section to call out. May post thoughts ~~tomorrow~~ today it's after midnight oh gosh, but wanted to post since I knew ya'll'd be interested in this.

Terrorists could use autocorrect according to OpenAI! Discuss!

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[-] Umbrias@beehaw.org -3 points 10 months ago

breaks out CRISPR kit in their dusty garage

I mean, it's genuinely not hard. This reads to me more like assuming all terrorists are fundamentally incapable of anything remotely intelligent, which is both silly and not the official position of CBRN experts. From smaller cultists to state actors, bio warfare is a genuine concern.

if you wanna be afraid

I'm not.

justify your grant expenditures

What grants do you think I'm getting?

Your comment sounds to me like lashing out about something because you want to assume every last thing you're sneering at is wrong, when really the thing you're sneering at is wrong in methodology and conclusions but not in the origin of a problem wholesale.

[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 10 months ago

I’m not.

Well, do what you want

What grants do you think I’m getting?

I meant authors of that paper, sorry if i was unclear about it

I mean, it’s genuinely not hard.

like i said before,

while someone who got all the way past about the first semester of organic chemistry lab is perfectly capable of making some rudimentary chemical weapons, they won’t necessarily be able to make it safely, reliably, cheaply, consistently, and without killing themselves,

but with biological weapons stakes are much higher, every single leak carries risk of ending up dead or being discovered and safety requirements are gonna be generally much more stringent than with chemical weapons. you can get away with using small amounts of something that would plausibly pass for a ww1 era chemical weapon with only nitrile gloves and good fumehood; with biological agents you're probably looking at doing about everything in glovebox. to use glovebox, you need to get glovebox, which, among other purchases, can move such person from government watch list to government act list

and even ignoring that, you can't just expect any random jihadi joe to make it work, you need someone who has some actual education and preferably expertise in microbiology, which if anything else severely limits poll of potential perpetrators

[-] Umbrias@beehaw.org 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The equipment and ppe for bio weapons and chemical weapons of the same health hazard is about the same. The only difference with biological weapons is you're doing stuff with fridges, incubators, agar, and petri dishes, rather than beakers, Bunsen burners, and filters.

In either case your logic is relying on a threatening actor to not have any education. Sure, the pool of candidates is lower for sophisticated say, anthrax, something you can almost trivially find in dirt, but it's also lower for sophisticated chemical weapons like say, sarin. And keep in mind, yes it's hard to do biology or chemistry, but devoted individuals do it in garages, for often innocuous reasons. You can't just assume some terrorist group will never have a strongly devoted individual or group who are competent enough to pull something off, you need to have preparedness. (In the form of local procedures, drills, and organization and plans and equipment to respond to threats as they develop, along with preventative measures)

Also make no mistake, spotting lab scale chem and biological warfare production is extremely difficult. Even moreso for biological production, but both resemble conventional labs (and could be!). Where biological becomes an issue is that lab scale production of a pathogen can self propagate in a way chem attacks or bomb attacks can't.

I'm not saying to be afraid, the barrier to entry on all weapons production is the lowest it's ever been, but sophistication in preventing them is also quite high. But it's not something that can just be brushed away, it's a real problem that real professionals are continuously solving.

[-] saucerwizard@awful.systems 5 points 10 months ago

Have you read Barriers to Bioweapons?

[-] Umbrias@beehaw.org 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I have not. Is it good?

Keep in mind that it was written in 2014, the Field of bioengineering in the past ten years has advanced considerably.

[-] saucerwizard@awful.systems 3 points 10 months ago

Yeah. It addresses your points I think.

[-] Umbrias@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I'll have to check it out.

The general point seems to be yours, that intellectual availability is the largest restriction on bioterrorism. I don't disagree, but a big part of my argument is that access to this information has never been higher (which is better than not for a variety of reasons) and access to resources usable for this has never been higher. We have plenty of garage scale bio labs as it is. So yes, the biggest limit is availability of people with knowledge to do it, that's not a hard roadblock, at least not anymore.

And the prediction horizon on biotech is tiny. Give it another ten years? Twenty? It's not a zero threat because nobody has done it right now yet.

[-] saucerwizard@awful.systems 5 points 10 months ago

Not just intellectual availability, but the complexity of the job itself. iirc it goes into the Russian experience.

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this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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