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by DrScientist
8 days ago
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>This didn't stop the Soviets. They did an enormous amount of very dangerous research with minimal logical application. Ultimately what stopped them ( and everybody else - let's face it it wasn't just the soviets ), is it's a bad idea. I think you way over estimate how hard the knowledge bit is in a biological weapon ( if you just want to kill indiscriminately - specific/controlled targeting a whole different ball game ). The barrier is motivation and kit ( though the kit is much easier to access that say the stuff you need to build a nuke ). The idea that all that's stopping some disaffected Joe sitting on his sofa at home and suddenly deciding to make a biological weapon is he can't get a set of instructions from ChatGPT is to miss the point. Ultimatelty it all comes down to are you motivated enough - if you are then the knowledge is out there with or without an AI summary. |
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That's a surprising claim: usually when I make this argument skeptics say that the knowledge barrier is so high that an LLM won't help enough!
I'd also be curious to hear what you think of the Aum Shinrikyo case, since that seems to me to be straightforwardly a failure of knowledge.
> The idea that all that's stopping some disaffected Joe sitting on his sofa at home and suddenly deciding to make a biological weapon is he can't get a set of instructions from ChatGPT is to miss the point.
I agree motivation is a huge barrier, in the sense that almost no one would do it. But to keep catastrophic bio attacks from happening as the knowledge barrier decreases it's not enough that most people wouldn't have the motivation. If 0.0001% of people have the motivation and 0.0001% have the means then we're probably ok, but if 0.0001% of people have the motivation and 0.1% have the means then we're not (0.0001% * 0.1% * population > 1).