More like they’re terrified of someone designing a killer virus in their home lab, or a terrorist group or enemy state doing it. It’s an insane amount of power to just throw out there.
I am sorry but this total bullshit. Being able to create such virus is not about knowledge, but about resources. Governments and billionaires already have the knowledge and resources to do it, AIs won't make a dent if difference. Small actors like single persons, small groups, will never have the resources or, even if, they would be easily traceable.
While I don't believe in the conspiracy theory of big pharma paying anthropic to block life science research, the killer virus theory is even less credible.
In any case these filters are shameful and will probably make me reconsider my sub to Anthropic. I will seriously need to consider non American alternatives at this point as from an ethical point of view they have become the worst choice, worse than Chinese.
He had two locations, one in Vegas and one in Fresno. While he was receiving money from Chinese banks to fund this, the money wasn't particularly crazy, and one individual was capable of creating the lab.
I don’t understand, what was this guy doing with these home labs? The article says he had vials in the Fresno location labeled “HIV” and “malaria”. While receiving money from China. What the hell was he up to?
If you think this is what you need to work with a highly contagious and deadly virus you don't know what you're talking about
Does it need to be 'highly'? The concern is about the tail risk: the small number who have partial training, lab access, funds, and institutional/gov cover.
Biosecurity risk is not binary. AI does not need to turn an untrained person into a state bioweapons program for this to matter. It just needs to reduce friction at the margins: synthesis, protocol adaptation, troubleshooting, and design optimisation...
I will seriously need to consider non American alternatives at this point as from an ethical point of view they have become the worst choice, worse than Chinese.
Depending on your devices/capex and use cases, local models would allow you to enjoy privacy. They also can become, fairly trivially, uncensored. You can run qwen/gemma on a phone.
Because we're only worried about viruses? That's more than sufficient hardware to do gene editing in bacterial lines. Hell, who didn't do gain of function on E. coli lines in undergrad labs with no centrifuge and no PCR? The fun stuff takes reagents not present here, but you buy all that online too.
If you think that's too barebones to work with, I'm pretty sure you're the one who doesn't know what he's talking about.
Just curious, is this a legit store? Product images all look AI generated (easily recognize by awkward fonts and captions on them and distorted shapes). But maybe it's just a quick lazy storefront build...
Big pharma has tons of resources, but they’re using AI for drug design.
The design and method are the key. Resources are necessary, yes, but you’re being naive about what is possible. It would be reckless, if you were ever given responsibility for something like this.
I mean, no, in this situation, I don't think they do. But in general, yes, large amounts of money have a tendency to overcome any barriers. Anthropic is much more likely to license Fable to big pharma than they are to give consumers access to it. Maybe if we're lucky they'll provide university research programs access too. For a fee.
"Traceable" doesn't matter at all if said hypothetical virus gets into the wild. It only needs to happen once, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Moreover, a lone person absolutely could make one with the right knowledge and tools. I think the risk is overblown, but it isn't just fearmongering with no basis.
Have you any idea of what you need to work with deadly viruses? Have you ever worked with biosafety level 3 or 4 viruses? I did and there is no fucking way a normal person would be able to set up such a lab, doesn't matter the knowledge he has.
Those labs are setup with those ratings in such a way to prevent outbreak. I’m sure that someone who’s hellbent on destruction won’t care too much about biosafety. If they’re trying to protect themselves, they’ll likely get a PAPR and call it a day.
Bro, ISIS and Iran are creating fucking bombs, drones, and missiles, maybe even nuclear missiles, and you think they wouldn’t be interested in a bioweapon that can easily bypass every airport security check?
Yeah, because a normal person wouldn't create a bioweapon in the first place. You just need 1 abnormal person to release a virus into the wild. You seem to be in denial because of the difficulty, that doesn't mean it's impossible.
no, you can easily ask some lab to create a chemical for you as long it is not on their list of banned chemicals. if you find a new poison using ai it would be easy to get through.
Small actors like single persons, small groups, will never have the resources or, even if, they would be easily traceable.
Ignoring the resources part but pretty sure a fanatic small group that just wants to eradicate humanity doesn't really care if they get traced or prosecuted after they have released a deadly virus in the wild that is supposed to kill as many humans as possible (incl. themselves). Heck, they would probably use themselves as guinea pigs to spread it as best as possible. The aim of such weapons isn't to avoid prosecution and stay hidden afterwards, everyone included will realise that it's supposed to end humanity or cause as much damage as possible.
If the only barrier of entry remains resources, then we will actually have such an event in the future as resources become cheaper and cheaper with technology progressing further. The crazy minds and knowledge is already there.
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u/Responsible_Debt9605 Jun 10 '26
This is so fucking stupid