4 ms·

My wife is doing her PhD in molecular neurobiology, and was amused by this - but also noted that the question is trivial and any undergrad with lab access would

My wife is doing her PhD in molecular neurobiology, and was amused by this - but also noted that the question is trivial and any undergrad with lab access would know how to do this. Watching her manage cell cultures it seems the difficulty is more around not having the cells die from every dust particle in the air being a microscopic pirate ship brimming with fungal spores set to pillage any plate of cells they land on, or some other wide array of horrors that befall genetically engineered human cell cultures with no immune system

fatherzine 3y ago
[flagged]
- margalabargala 3y ago
  > O(undergrad with lab access) = 10k You're off by at least 3 orders of magnitude. There are 18 million undergrads in the US alone. I would bet that at least half have some sort of basic bio lab class and can use a lab, or has a friend that does and would let them in. There's zero security in undergrad bio labs.
  - fatherzine 3y ago
    undergrad in molecular biology = 4k. assuming eg CS undergrads don't attend en-masse molecular biology classes and/or have lab access. edit: and one obvious error, it's graduates with molecular biology degrees, presumably the undergrad population is ~5x larger, for a total of 20k. and presumably the world is larger, so we can throw in another ~5x factor for a total of 100k. still, /orders of magnitude/ smaller than world population with access to the Internet. there are a /lot/ of broken people in the world. i'd sleep more comfortable they don't get access to step by step instructions in their local language on how to design and spread the next .*pox plague at the cost less than eg a motorcycle. https://datausa.io/profile/cip/cellular-molecular-biology https://datausa.io/profile/cip/cellular-molecular-biology
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      My majors weren't in molecular biology, just Biotech and Biology. I actually learned viral titering and expansion in cell culture on the job, but nearly every bio undergrad will get a basic intro to cell culture techniques. The specific techniques for amplifying a virus are open to anyone with decent search skills, e.g. https://www.addgene.org/protocols/#virus https://www.addgene.org/protocols/#virus
- jakewins 3y ago
  The thing is you need the lab - if you don’t have the incubator and the air filtration systems and the autoclave and the centrifuge and the… then the cells will die or you can’t extract the viruses etc. You need the lab to do this, and for anyone that has lab access the actual doing - multiplying some viruses - is trivial
  - fatherzine 3y ago
    if you were to get me in a lab right now, i'd had absolutely zero clue on how to multiply a virus. perhaps i'm old and behind the times. thing is, i'm not sure about the lab access requirement. i'd expect any number of diy techniques to be functional substitutes. brb, asking chatgpt for more details.
    - pests 3y ago
      The Thought Emporium[0] on YouTube does homelab DNA editing, grows modified bacteria and viruses, and is currently working on growing human neurons. I've learned a lot and its very fascinating. I haven't found another maker online doing anything remotely similar. He's like the NileRed for genetic engineering instead of chemistry. [0] https://www.youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium https://www.youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium
Fomite 3y ago
Pretty much this. Having worked in biopreparedness...the instructions aren't the hard part. Both creating and deploying a biological threat are wildly more difficult.
- nextos 3y ago
  I don't fully agree. Things are becoming quite simple, which is scary. There's a well-intentioned lobby in the UK advocating for some minimal control, i.e. checking DNA / RNA / protein sequences. For instance, cheap mRNA synthesis as a service has lowered the barrier of entry for any malicious actor. It's frankly ridiculous there are no checks in place right now.
  - jdewerd 3y ago
    > minimal control, i.e. checking DNA / RNA / protein sequences They were already doing this 15 years ago. > It's frankly ridiculous there are no checks in place right now. It's frankly ridiculous that you think this.
    - nextos 3y ago
      That's your opinion, but I've seen firsthand that there's a lack of controls in this area.
      - jdewerd 3y ago
        My experience, not my opinion. I personally tripped over the checks many times, back before they got institutional authentication smoothed out. I regularly hear bio researchers claim firtshand experience that there are no checks, but then it turns out they were using institutional names, credit cards, and shipping addresses the whole time, so what they actually experienced was a lack of false positives rather than an absence of checking.
    - jefftk 3y ago
      >> minimal control, i.e. checking DNA / RNA / protein sequences > They were already doing this 15 years ago. I work in this area. Some synthesis providers check, others don't. And the checking isn't great. (Some of my coworkers work on https://securedna.org https://securedna.org which is trying to make this screening more robust.)
015a 3y ago
I was thinking this as well. > Due to the sensitive nature of this model and of the biological threat creation use case, the research-only model that responds directly to biologically risky questions (without refusals) is made available to our vetted expert cohort only. We took several steps to ensure security, including in-person monitoring at a secure facility and a custom model access procedure, with access strictly limited to the period of the experiment. Additional considerations regarding information hazards and security protocols are detailed in the Appendix. This is well past cringe. A lot of what the AI community puts out feels like they're LARPing scientists, similar to the valid question of whether Software Engineering is actually engineering.
- sdenton4 3y ago
  Truth. AI researchers need to work with actual scientists or they ended up with the same brain-in-a-jar problems that their models have...
- albrewer 3y ago
  The difference between a software engineer and a programmer is similar to the difference between a mechanical designer and a mechanical engineer. After several years doing the same job in a well-established organization, they're not going to perform all that differently.
impossiblefork 3y ago
When we did this kind of thing in high school we had huge problems with contamination, but I don't agree that it is so hard. I think the barrier is really that up until now exactly zero who want to do biomedical research have also wanted to kill huge numbers of people, with the exception of some idiots in the past who worked on state bioweapons.

fatherzine 3y ago

[flagged]

margalabargala 3y ago
> O(undergrad with lab access) = 10k You're off by at least 3 orders of magnitude. There are 18 million undergrads in the US alone. I would bet that at least half have some sort of basic bio lab class and can use a lab, or has a friend that does and would let them in. There's zero security in undergrad bio labs.
- fatherzine 3y ago
  undergrad in molecular biology = 4k. assuming eg CS undergrads don't attend en-masse molecular biology classes and/or have lab access. edit: and one obvious error, it's graduates with molecular biology degrees, presumably the undergrad population is ~5x larger, for a total of 20k. and presumably the world is larger, so we can throw in another ~5x factor for a total of 100k. still, /orders of magnitude/ smaller than world population with access to the Internet. there are a /lot/ of broken people in the world. i'd sleep more comfortable they don't get access to step by step instructions in their local language on how to design and spread the next .*pox plague at the cost less than eg a motorcycle. https://datausa.io/profile/cip/cellular-molecular-biology https://datausa.io/profile/cip/cellular-molecular-biology
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    My majors weren't in molecular biology, just Biotech and Biology. I actually learned viral titering and expansion in cell culture on the job, but nearly every bio undergrad will get a basic intro to cell culture techniques. The specific techniques for amplifying a virus are open to anyone with decent search skills, e.g. https://www.addgene.org/protocols/#virus https://www.addgene.org/protocols/#virus
jakewins 3y ago
The thing is you need the lab - if you don’t have the incubator and the air filtration systems and the autoclave and the centrifuge and the… then the cells will die or you can’t extract the viruses etc. You need the lab to do this, and for anyone that has lab access the actual doing - multiplying some viruses - is trivial
- fatherzine 3y ago
  if you were to get me in a lab right now, i'd had absolutely zero clue on how to multiply a virus. perhaps i'm old and behind the times. thing is, i'm not sure about the lab access requirement. i'd expect any number of diy techniques to be functional substitutes. brb, asking chatgpt for more details.
  - pests 3y ago
    The Thought Emporium[0] on YouTube does homelab DNA editing, grows modified bacteria and viruses, and is currently working on growing human neurons. I've learned a lot and its very fascinating. I haven't found another maker online doing anything remotely similar. He's like the NileRed for genetic engineering instead of chemistry. [0] https://www.youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium https://www.youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium

Fomite 3y ago

Pretty much this. Having worked in biopreparedness...the instructions aren't the hard part. Both creating and deploying a biological threat are wildly more difficult.

nextos 3y ago
I don't fully agree. Things are becoming quite simple, which is scary. There's a well-intentioned lobby in the UK advocating for some minimal control, i.e. checking DNA / RNA / protein sequences. For instance, cheap mRNA synthesis as a service has lowered the barrier of entry for any malicious actor. It's frankly ridiculous there are no checks in place right now.
- jdewerd 3y ago
  > minimal control, i.e. checking DNA / RNA / protein sequences They were already doing this 15 years ago. > It's frankly ridiculous there are no checks in place right now. It's frankly ridiculous that you think this.
  - nextos 3y ago
    That's your opinion, but I've seen firsthand that there's a lack of controls in this area.
    - jdewerd 3y ago
      My experience, not my opinion. I personally tripped over the checks many times, back before they got institutional authentication smoothed out. I regularly hear bio researchers claim firtshand experience that there are no checks, but then it turns out they were using institutional names, credit cards, and shipping addresses the whole time, so what they actually experienced was a lack of false positives rather than an absence of checking.
  - jefftk 3y ago
    >> minimal control, i.e. checking DNA / RNA / protein sequences > They were already doing this 15 years ago. I work in this area. Some synthesis providers check, others don't. And the checking isn't great. (Some of my coworkers work on https://securedna.org https://securedna.org which is trying to make this screening more robust.)

015a 3y ago

I was thinking this as well. > Due to the sensitive nature of this model and of the biological threat creation use case, the research-only model that responds directly to biologically risky questions (without refusals) is made available to our vetted expert cohort only. We took several steps to ensure security, including in-person monitoring at a secure facility and a custom model access procedure, with access strictly limited to the period of the experiment. Additional considerations regarding information hazards and security protocols are detailed in the Appendix. This is well past cringe. A lot of what the AI community puts out feels like they're LARPing scientists, similar to the valid question of whether Software Engineering is actually engineering.

sdenton4 3y ago
Truth. AI researchers need to work with actual scientists or they ended up with the same brain-in-a-jar problems that their models have...
albrewer 3y ago
The difference between a software engineer and a programmer is similar to the difference between a mechanical designer and a mechanical engineer. After several years doing the same job in a well-established organization, they're not going to perform all that differently.

impossiblefork 3y ago

When we did this kind of thing in high school we had huge problems with contamination, but I don't agree that it is so hard. I think the barrier is really that up until now exactly zero who want to do biomedical research have also wanted to kill huge numbers of people, with the exception of some idiots in the past who worked on state bioweapons.