The regulation at the DNA Printer level works I think, as long as nobody invents a good at home DNA printer, but if they do that there is no need for custom viruses, somebody can take an existing one that is known to be deadly and just print it.
That’s what I’m thinking. If we can restrict EUV technology to the West then why can’t we restrict DNA manufacturing? Not to the West in this case but to capable governments like with Nuclear power.
its not really a question of will, its a question of difficulty. if it were easy and cheap to build EUV processes, no amount of complaining and posturing would prevent someone from reproducing that.
You can literally send an email to one of hundreds of companies that do exactly this. They have no way of knowing whether you're asking them to synthesize a virus or a drug candidate or what.
I'm sure some of them would, but they're not required by law to do so. And historically the way you'd do this is by actual fragment/substring matches. But these are novel viruses now. So what you really want to do is try to predict whether a novel genome is pathogenic... which is itself obviously a very hard technical problem.
One of the easiest and most effective AI regulations would be to simply require all these labs to run all incoming requests through a suite of the most advanced models asking if the request is likely to be a pathogenic agent.
Yes probably true. Unfortunately we need only one defector lab to severely degrade the overall effectiveness of this approach (leaving aside the effectiveness of the detection models themselves).
You email the RNA strand (a text file) to a lab along with some money. The lab converts that information into a physical object (read: virus) and sends it back to you in the mail.
Something I've been worried about for years is the proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people, in potentially irreversible ways. Combined with automation, this is a recipe for disaster. We're clearly lacking in the ability to regulate and govern ourselves, and real world market forces (as opposed to the hypothetical free market) encourage reckless aggressiveness at the level of companies and countries.
Although, I must admit, as a doomer, I'm pleasantly surprised things aren't already worse than they are.
> proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people
did you mean greater number of people with less resources?
EDIT: thanks to others that point out how you can interpret this differently, which I think is: "it is now easier for smaller teams with fewer resources" rather than my original interpretation of "power is now concentrated so that fewer people can do this than before"
I had the same reaction, but I think they meant fewer as in "requires less consensus-building to wield meaningful power." Used to have to convince lots of people to go to war in order to kill a couple million people. Fast approaching a one- or two-man weekend project.
Every person's utopia is someone else's dystopia and vice versa. What you've described is clearly some peoples (ie. already billionaires) version of the best possible world. Not so much for the rest of us though...
No, a human could do (and have, many many many times, see like half of molecular biology) this as well. If anything this will help with vaccine development.
Same reason it couldn't be a problem to sell aerosolized anthrax at the hardware store. Humans have (many many times) made aerosolized anthrax. Can't see any conceivable problem with more people having access to it.
The regulation at the DNA Printer level works I think, as long as nobody invents a good at home DNA printer, but if they do that there is no need for custom viruses, somebody can take an existing one that is known to be deadly and just print it.
That’s what I’m thinking. If we can restrict EUV technology to the West then why can’t we restrict DNA manufacturing? Not to the West in this case but to capable governments like with Nuclear power.
its not really a question of will, its a question of difficulty. if it were easy and cheap to build EUV processes, no amount of complaining and posturing would prevent someone from reproducing that.
The design was never the hard part. You still have to make the thing.
Designing a modifcation to an existing virus is perhaps more achievable, but the implementation is still the hard part.
You can literally send an email to one of hundreds of companies that do exactly this. They have no way of knowing whether you're asking them to synthesize a virus or a drug candidate or what.
No, you literally cannot. Synthesizing a stretch of DNA is trivial, and what you can send away for [1].
Building a functional virus is not even remotely a turn-key operation.
[1] Even then, the companies will rarely give you long enough reads to make a full gene scaffold (let alone a virus). That's up to you.
Yet.
Would they not be like “hmmm this one looks kinda similar to a known virus”
They really just synthesize anything for you?
I'm sure some of them would, but they're not required by law to do so. And historically the way you'd do this is by actual fragment/substring matches. But these are novel viruses now. So what you really want to do is try to predict whether a novel genome is pathogenic... which is itself obviously a very hard technical problem.
One of the easiest and most effective AI regulations would be to simply require all these labs to run all incoming requests through a suite of the most advanced models asking if the request is likely to be a pathogenic agent.
Yes probably true. Unfortunately we need only one defector lab to severely degrade the overall effectiveness of this approach (leaving aside the effectiveness of the detection models themselves).
That’s one interesting way to generate demand for AI vendors if the AI bet doesn’t pay off /s
Yes in much the same way you can literally build a rocket and go to the moon.
You may be skipping a few of the involved steps.
What involved steps are those?
You email the RNA strand (a text file) to a lab along with some money. The lab converts that information into a physical object (read: virus) and sends it back to you in the mail.
What step is missing?
There’s YouTubers who do this [0]. I’d argue estimate the risks of a synthetically induced pandemic of massive impact this century are very high
- [0] https://youtu.be/aoczYXJeMY4?is=OqObeGzZB6AKL0Jk
Were we safer when the viruses were object oriented?
Yes, we should, but even here distribution is an serious issue.
Doubly because they’ll also use AI to manage the AI pandemic response.
Something I've been worried about for years is the proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people, in potentially irreversible ways. Combined with automation, this is a recipe for disaster. We're clearly lacking in the ability to regulate and govern ourselves, and real world market forces (as opposed to the hypothetical free market) encourage reckless aggressiveness at the level of companies and countries.
Although, I must admit, as a doomer, I'm pleasantly surprised things aren't already worse than they are.
> proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people
did you mean greater number of people with less resources?
EDIT: thanks to others that point out how you can interpret this differently, which I think is: "it is now easier for smaller teams with fewer resources" rather than my original interpretation of "power is now concentrated so that fewer people can do this than before"
No, I think they mean that it used to take a giant lab full of specialists with lots of funding to do lots of damage before.
Now, the worry is a lone nut in a basement with no money could pull off an act of bio terrorism.
I had the same reaction, but I think they meant fewer as in "requires less consensus-building to wield meaningful power." Used to have to convince lots of people to go to war in order to kill a couple million people. Fast approaching a one- or two-man weekend project.
Fewer as in the size of an individual group, even though the total number of people who could find themselves in such a group is greater.
Every person's utopia is someone else's dystopia and vice versa. What you've described is clearly some peoples (ie. already billionaires) version of the best possible world. Not so much for the rest of us though...
Betteridge's law strikes again
Wait, why are you not worried?
It's super cringe and d e c e l to think technological advancement could have any dangers whatsoever.
Just like in a car, the true demonstration of intelligence is closing your eyes and slamming the pedal to the floor.
No, a human could do (and have, many many many times, see like half of molecular biology) this as well. If anything this will help with vaccine development.
Same reason it couldn't be a problem to sell aerosolized anthrax at the hardware store. Humans have (many many times) made aerosolized anthrax. Can't see any conceivable problem with more people having access to it.
That doesn’t invalidate the point, you’re just saying it’s already a risk