this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2024
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SneerClub

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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

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OpenAI blog post: https://openai.com/research/building-an-early-warning-system-for-llm-aided-biological-threat-creation

Orange discuss: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39207291

I don't have any particular section to call out. May post thoughts ~~tomorrow~~ today it's after midnight oh gosh, but wanted to post since I knew ya'll'd be interested in this.

Terrorists could use autocorrect according to OpenAI! Discuss!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

the relevant field would be microbiology. while someone who got all the way past about the first semester of organic chemistry lab is perfectly capable of making some rudimentary chemical weapons, they won't necessarily be able to make it safely, reliably, cheaply, consistently, and without killing themselves, and universities most of the time put enough sense in everyone's head to not do that. this strictly requires that you know anything about chemistry, too. for bioweapons every single problem pointed to above is orders of magnitudes worse, and you probably need masters degree to do anything seriously nefarious. then you get into the problem of using that stuff, and you need explosives for that anyway. the reason for that

(Also I think there is a good reason we don’t really see terrorists use biological weapons, nor chemical weapons (with a few notable, but not that effective exceptions), big bada boom is king)

is that barrier to booms is even lower, especially if your country is strewn with UXO. there's also an entirely different reason why professional militaries don't use chemical/biological weapons https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

also the another reason that wiped out any interest in chemical warfare among militaries is that they found out first cluster munitions and then PGMs vastly more useful in the roles they were shoehorning chemical weapons in, not to mention lack of diplomatic and other problems

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I feel it's important to mention that as far as CBRN threats are concerned, biological warfare threats are very real, a serious problem, and admittedly accelerated by ai tools for novel biological structures. Militaries don't use bio weapons because they suck at military things, largely, but terrorists have and can used bio weapons to terrifying effect. Bio warfare proliferation is difficult to spot and counter.

To be clear here, open ai is late to the party on this front with a terrible paper, but practically it's a serious concern, both ai tools and non ai tools lowering the barrier to entry, as well as the fact that any given bio lab essentially looks like a bio warfare lab.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

terrorists have and can used bio weapons to terrifying effect

Can you please tell me when and where? The Japanese subway gassing comes to mind. Anthrax envelopes in 2001. Any others since then?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

there were really only three. one is 2001 anthrax that you mention; other is salmonella spread by cultists in literally 1984; and another would be 1989 medfly infestation. everything else is, relatively speaking, non-incident

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Here's an overview. Not the highest casualty count but certainly not ineffective.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8818129/

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago