How AI could enable bioterrorism

Only a hundred years ago, no person could have single handedly destroyed humanity. Nuclear weapons changed this situation, giving the power of global annihilation to a small handful of nations with powerful militaries. Now, thanks to advances in biotechnology and AI, a much larger group of people could have the power to create a global catastrophe.

This is the upshot of a new paper from MIT titled “Can large language models democratize access to dual-use biotechnology?” The authors demonstrate that today’s language models are capable of providing detailed instructions for non-expert users about how to create pathogens that could cause a global pandemic.

Language models can help users build dangerous [...]

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Outline:

(00:10) How AI could enable bioterrorism

(03:48) Policymakers continue to focus on AI

(05:27) Links

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First published:
June 13th, 2023

Source:
https://newsletter.safe.ai/p/ai-safety-newsletter-10

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AISN #10: How AI could enable bioterrorism, and policymakers continue to focus on AI .