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I'm far from anything resembling an expert in biological weapons, but this seems to me puzzlingly overconfident in the opposite direction. > PhD students in 20
by zekefoppa 23d ago
I'm far from anything resembling an expert in biological weapons, but this seems to me puzzlingly overconfident in the opposite direction.
> PhD students in 2026 using state-of-the-art AI software are spending months or years trying to design simple peptide binders that inhibit some enzyme or pull down some protein
This confuses me, as state-of-the-art AI software is moving quite quickly. Any software that is currently state-of-the-art AI.. hasn't existed for years, maybe not even for months.
It also seems quite odd to claim that there are no sufficiently dangerous diseases when we have high-security research labs dedicated to exploring.. exactly these kinds of diseases.
And, even if it's not a disgruntled teenager, it just takes one leak from a lab that has 10xd productivity using AI tools.
This is a real risk that existed before AI, one that I think we can now confidently say that society is under-prepared for since 2020. It is certainly magnified by AI, even if it's not 100x.
The author even seems to recognize this:
> So, if you’re worried about AI-designed superviruses, think COVID, not Ebola. And if you’re now a little less worried, maybe you understand where I’m coming from.
This is exactly where I think most people are starting from, and that's _why we're worried_.
- deleted 23d ago[deleted]
- ghurtado 23d agoIf you quote the article, then you are implicitly telling others that you have read it. But it's pretty clear you have not?
- zekefoppa 23d agomethinks it is more likely that I read it but missed the point? Would you be able to share what I misunderstood?
- skeledrew 23d agoThink of it this way: if it wasn't generally crazy difficult to create even somewhat effective bioweapons (due to the reasons given in the article), there would've been non-trivial use of said weapons in terrorism, war, assassination attempts, etc over time. But we're still "stuck" with using primarily bombs, guns and - to far less extent - poisons.