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Chemical weapons are already a solved problem. By the mid 1920s there was already enough chemical agents to kill most of the population of Europe. By the 1970s

Chemical weapons are already a solved problem. By the mid 1920s there was already enough chemical agents to kill most of the population of Europe. By the 1970s there were enough in global stockpiles to kill every human on the planet several times over. Yes, this presents additional risk from non-state actors, but there's no fundamentally new risk here.

BowBun 3y ago
I agree in general. However much like how the rise of 'script kiddies' meant that inexperienced, sometimes underage kids get involved with hacking, one can worry the same can happen with AI-enabled activities. I've spent enough time in the shady parts of the internet to realize that people that spend significant time learning about niche/dangerous hobbies _tend_ to realize the seriousness of it. My fear with bio-weapons would be some 13-year-old being given step-by-step instructions with almost 0 effort to create something truly dangerous. It lowers the bar quite a bit for things that tended to be pretty niche and extreme.
- gosub100 3y ago
  I don't think the "how to make $DANGEROUS_SUBSTANCE" is any easier with AI than with a search engine. However I could see it adding risk with evasion of countermeasures: "How do I get _____ on a plane?" "How do I obtain $PRECURSOR_CHEMICAL?"
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    AI guided step-by-steps can fill in for a lack of rudimentary knowledge, as long as one can follow instructions. Conversational interfaces definitely increase the accessibility of knowledge. And critically, SaaS AI platforms increase the availability of AI. E.g. the person who wouldn't be able to set up and run a local model, but can click a button on a website. It seems reasonable to preclude SaaS platforms from making it trivial to produce the worse societal harms. E.g. prevent stable diffusion services from returning celebrities or politicians, or LLMs from producing political content. Sure, it's still possible. But a knee high barrier at least keeps out those who aren't smart enough to step over it.
    - pests 3y ago
      > Conversational interfaces definitely increase the accessibility of knowledge. Shouldn't increasing the accessibility of knowledge be a good thing but yet your tone seems to imply the opposite?
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        Depends on the value you ascribe to people's use of easy knowledge. Circa-1995, I would have said uncategorically yes! It's a wonderful thing! Today? I'm much more of the opinion that knowledge hard-earned is knowledge valued and respected. And trivially-earned is... not. I don't think it's possible to suppress knowledge. Even about NBC weapons. But I'm on the fence as to whether "putting it on the high shelf where anyone has to work to get it" is a net positive or negative for society as a whole.
      - s3p 3y ago
        Even knowledge of how to commit genocide or manufacture chemical weapons?
        nradov 3y ago
        Those are not big secrets. You can find history textbooks which explain how to become a dictator and order your minions to commit genocide. You can find plenty of recipes online which explain how to manufacture chemical weapons. In particular the original chemical weapon chlorine gas is rather trivial to create. And yet genocide and use of chemical weapons are still fairly rare. Most people choose not to do those things, and there are a number of practical obstacles. Knowledge or lack thereof isn't the issue.
        gosub100 3y ago
        that knowledge (the science of how to manipulate people) may be helpful in stopping it from happening because it could be used to warn people that the new charismatic dictator has 9/10 properties of others who have committed atrocities.
    - gosub100 3y ago
- sterlind 3y ago
  how is a 13-year old going to get access to a DNA synthesizer, incubators, growth media, and numerous kits for replicating and transfecting bacteria with a plasmid, or to incubate some virus, along with all the assays and such needed? even if this 13-year old somehow found herself alone in a fully-equipped BSL-3 laboratory, it's still a fuck-ton of work. far from "almost 0 effort." not knowing what to do is not the bottleneck.
  - JonChesterfield 3y ago
    That barrier to entry will definitely come down over time.
nopinsight 3y ago
Given how fast AI has improved in recent years, can we be certain no malicious group will discover a way to engineer biological weapons or pandemic-inducing pathogens using near-future AI? Moreover, once an AI with such capability is open source, there's practically no way to put it back into Pandora's box. Implementing proper and judicious regulations will reduce the risks to everyone.
jstarfish 3y ago
> this presents additional risk from non-state actors, but there's no fundamentally new risk here. This is splitting hairs for no real purpose. Additional risk is new risk. > By the mid 1920s there was already enough chemical agents to kill most of the population of Europe. By the 1970s there were enough in global stockpiles to kill every human on the planet several times over. Those global stockpiles continue to be controlled by state actors though, not aggrieved civilians. Once we lost that advantage, by the 1990s we had civilians manufacturing and releasing sarin gas in subways and detonating trucks full of fertilizer. We really don't want kids escalating from school shootings to synthesis and deployment of mustard gas.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Wiki has a pretty nice article on what went into the sarin attack. [1] A brief quote: --- "The Satyan-7 facility was declared ready for occupancy by September 1993 with the capacity to produce about 40–50 litres (11–13 US gal) of sarin, being equipped with 30-litre (7.9 US gal) capacity mixing flasks within protective hoods, and eventually employing 100 Aum members; the UN would later estimate the value of the building and its contents at $30 million.[23] Despite the safety features and often state-of-the-art equipment and practices, the operation of the facility was very unsafe – one analyst would later describe the cult as having a "high degree of book learning, but virtually nothing in the way of technical skill."[24]" --- All of those hundreds of workers, countless experts working for who knows how many man hours, and just massive scale development culminated in a subway attack carried out on 3 lines, during rush hour. It killed a total of 13 people. Imagine if they just bought a bunch of cars and started running people over. Many of these things sound absolutely terrifying, but in practice they are not such a threat except when carried out at a military level of scale and development. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack
- NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
  >We really don't want kids escalating from school shootings to synthesis and deployment of mustard gas. I mean, you can make chlorine gas by mixing bleach and vinegar.
- 3y ago
zarzavat 3y ago
A lot of knowledge is locked up in the chemical profession. The intersection between qualified chemists and crazy people is, absolutely, a small number. If regular people start to get access to that knowledge it could be a problem.
- serf 3y ago
  >If regular people start to get access to that knowledge it could be a problem. so when are we going to start regulating and restricting the sale of education/text books? a knowledge portal isn't a new concept.
  - nopinsight 3y ago
    Knowledge how to manufacture chemical weapons at scale is regulated as well. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention Moreover, current AI can be turned into an agent using basic programming knowledge. Such an agent is not very capable yet, but it's getting better by the month.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > Knowledge how to manufacture chemical weapons at scale is regulated as well. Kinda, but also no. I learned two distinct ways to make a poisonous gas from only normal kitchen supplies while at school, and I have only a GCSE grade B in Chemistry. Took me another decade to learn that specific chemical could be pressure-liquified in standard 2 litre soda bottles. That combination could wipe out an underground railway station from what fits in a moderately sized rucksack. It would still be a horrifically bad idea to attempt this DIY, even if you had a legit use for it, given it's a poisonous gas. I really don't want to be present for a live-action demonstration of someone doing this with a Spot robot, let alone with a more potent chemical agent they got from an LLM whose alignment is "Do Anything Now".
    - ndriscoll 3y ago
      Right now LLMs are trained on publicly available information, so if that knowledge is guarded, and if an LLM can provide it, then it's not guarded very well.
king_magic 3y ago
> but there's no fundamentally new risk here This is incredibly naive. These models unlock capabilities for previously unsophisticated actors to do extremely dangerous things in almost undetectable ways.
- throwaway4aday 3y ago
  you can't fix stupid
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 3y ago
> Yes, this presents additional risk from non-state actors, but there's no fundamentally new risk here. That doesn't seem right. Surely, making it easier for non-state actors to do things that state actors only fail to do because they agreed to treaties banning it, can only increase the risk that non-state actors may do those things? Laser blinding weapons are banned by treaty, widespread access to lasers lead to scenes like this a decade ago during the Arab Spring: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-23182254 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-23182254

BowBun 3y ago

I agree in general. However much like how the rise of 'script kiddies' meant that inexperienced, sometimes underage kids get involved with hacking, one can worry the same can happen with AI-enabled activities. I've spent enough time in the shady parts of the internet to realize that people that spend significant time learning about niche/dangerous hobbies _tend_ to realize the seriousness of it. My fear with bio-weapons would be some 13-year-old being given step-by-step instructions with almost 0 effort to create something truly dangerous. It lowers the bar quite a bit for things that tended to be pretty niche and extreme.

gosub100 3y ago
I don't think the "how to make $DANGEROUS_SUBSTANCE" is any easier with AI than with a search engine. However I could see it adding risk with evasion of countermeasures: "How do I get _____ on a plane?" "How do I obtain $PRECURSOR_CHEMICAL?"
- ethbr1 3y ago
  AI guided step-by-steps can fill in for a lack of rudimentary knowledge, as long as one can follow instructions. Conversational interfaces definitely increase the accessibility of knowledge. And critically, SaaS AI platforms increase the availability of AI. E.g. the person who wouldn't be able to set up and run a local model, but can click a button on a website. It seems reasonable to preclude SaaS platforms from making it trivial to produce the worse societal harms. E.g. prevent stable diffusion services from returning celebrities or politicians, or LLMs from producing political content. Sure, it's still possible. But a knee high barrier at least keeps out those who aren't smart enough to step over it.
  - pests 3y ago
    > Conversational interfaces definitely increase the accessibility of knowledge. Shouldn't increasing the accessibility of knowledge be a good thing but yet your tone seems to imply the opposite?
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      Depends on the value you ascribe to people's use of easy knowledge. Circa-1995, I would have said uncategorically yes! It's a wonderful thing! Today? I'm much more of the opinion that knowledge hard-earned is knowledge valued and respected. And trivially-earned is... not. I don't think it's possible to suppress knowledge. Even about NBC weapons. But I'm on the fence as to whether "putting it on the high shelf where anyone has to work to get it" is a net positive or negative for society as a whole.
    - s3p 3y ago
      Even knowledge of how to commit genocide or manufacture chemical weapons?
      - nradov 3y ago
        Those are not big secrets. You can find history textbooks which explain how to become a dictator and order your minions to commit genocide. You can find plenty of recipes online which explain how to manufacture chemical weapons. In particular the original chemical weapon chlorine gas is rather trivial to create. And yet genocide and use of chemical weapons are still fairly rare. Most people choose not to do those things, and there are a number of practical obstacles. Knowledge or lack thereof isn't the issue.
      - gosub100 3y ago
        that knowledge (the science of how to manipulate people) may be helpful in stopping it from happening because it could be used to warn people that the new charismatic dictator has 9/10 properties of others who have committed atrocities.
  - gosub100 3y ago
sterlind 3y ago
how is a 13-year old going to get access to a DNA synthesizer, incubators, growth media, and numerous kits for replicating and transfecting bacteria with a plasmid, or to incubate some virus, along with all the assays and such needed? even if this 13-year old somehow found herself alone in a fully-equipped BSL-3 laboratory, it's still a fuck-ton of work. far from "almost 0 effort." not knowing what to do is not the bottleneck.
- JonChesterfield 3y ago
  That barrier to entry will definitely come down over time.

nopinsight 3y ago

Given how fast AI has improved in recent years, can we be certain no malicious group will discover a way to engineer biological weapons or pandemic-inducing pathogens using near-future AI? Moreover, once an AI with such capability is open source, there's practically no way to put it back into Pandora's box. Implementing proper and judicious regulations will reduce the risks to everyone.

jstarfish 3y ago

> this presents additional risk from non-state actors, but there's no fundamentally new risk here. This is splitting hairs for no real purpose. Additional risk is new risk. > By the mid 1920s there was already enough chemical agents to kill most of the population of Europe. By the 1970s there were enough in global stockpiles to kill every human on the planet several times over. Those global stockpiles continue to be controlled by state actors though, not aggrieved civilians. Once we lost that advantage, by the 1990s we had civilians manufacturing and releasing sarin gas in subways and detonating trucks full of fertilizer. We really don't want kids escalating from school shootings to synthesis and deployment of mustard gas.

somenameforme 3y ago
Wiki has a pretty nice article on what went into the sarin attack. [1] A brief quote: --- "The Satyan-7 facility was declared ready for occupancy by September 1993 with the capacity to produce about 40–50 litres (11–13 US gal) of sarin, being equipped with 30-litre (7.9 US gal) capacity mixing flasks within protective hoods, and eventually employing 100 Aum members; the UN would later estimate the value of the building and its contents at $30 million.[23] Despite the safety features and often state-of-the-art equipment and practices, the operation of the facility was very unsafe – one analyst would later describe the cult as having a "high degree of book learning, but virtually nothing in the way of technical skill."[24]" --- All of those hundreds of workers, countless experts working for who knows how many man hours, and just massive scale development culminated in a subway attack carried out on 3 lines, during rush hour. It killed a total of 13 people. Imagine if they just bought a bunch of cars and started running people over. Many of these things sound absolutely terrifying, but in practice they are not such a threat except when carried out at a military level of scale and development. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack
NovemberWhiskey 3y ago
>We really don't want kids escalating from school shootings to synthesis and deployment of mustard gas. I mean, you can make chlorine gas by mixing bleach and vinegar.
3y ago

zarzavat 3y ago

A lot of knowledge is locked up in the chemical profession. The intersection between qualified chemists and crazy people is, absolutely, a small number. If regular people start to get access to that knowledge it could be a problem.

serf 3y ago
>If regular people start to get access to that knowledge it could be a problem. so when are we going to start regulating and restricting the sale of education/text books? a knowledge portal isn't a new concept.
- nopinsight 3y ago
  Knowledge how to manufacture chemical weapons at scale is regulated as well. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention Moreover, current AI can be turned into an agent using basic programming knowledge. Such an agent is not very capable yet, but it's getting better by the month.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > Knowledge how to manufacture chemical weapons at scale is regulated as well. Kinda, but also no. I learned two distinct ways to make a poisonous gas from only normal kitchen supplies while at school, and I have only a GCSE grade B in Chemistry. Took me another decade to learn that specific chemical could be pressure-liquified in standard 2 litre soda bottles. That combination could wipe out an underground railway station from what fits in a moderately sized rucksack. It would still be a horrifically bad idea to attempt this DIY, even if you had a legit use for it, given it's a poisonous gas. I really don't want to be present for a live-action demonstration of someone doing this with a Spot robot, let alone with a more potent chemical agent they got from an LLM whose alignment is "Do Anything Now".
  - ndriscoll 3y ago
    Right now LLMs are trained on publicly available information, so if that knowledge is guarded, and if an LLM can provide it, then it's not guarded very well.

king_magic 3y ago

> but there's no fundamentally new risk here This is incredibly naive. These models unlock capabilities for previously unsophisticated actors to do extremely dangerous things in almost undetectable ways.

throwaway4aday 3y ago
you can't fix stupid

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ben_w 3y ago

> Yes, this presents additional risk from non-state actors, but there's no fundamentally new risk here. That doesn't seem right. Surely, making it easier for non-state actors to do things that state actors only fail to do because they agreed to treaties banning it, can only increase the risk that non-state actors may do those things? Laser blinding weapons are banned by treaty, widespread access to lasers lead to scenes like this a decade ago during the Arab Spring: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-23182254 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-23182254