AI won't design a supervirus that kills us all
I'm sorry, you're not going to die from an AI-engineered supervirus
A computational biologist and AI researcher pushes back on economist Noah Smith's fear that AI will soon enable a teenager to unleash a civilization-ending supervirus. Drawing on his own work designing viruses and AI systems for protein design, he argues that biology's fundamental tradeoffs—between lethality and transmissibility—make such a scenario virtually impossible. Even if AI could design the perfect pathogen, building and distributing it would remain daunting. The real pandemic threats, he says, are viruses like measles and COVID-19, not sci-fi fantasies.
When people believe that AI could figure this out on its own, without first running extensive and expensive basic science experiments, they have left the realm of science and have entered what can only be described as religion.
- janalsncm
> When people believe that AI could figure this out on its own, without first running extensive and expensive basic science experiments, they have left the realm of science and have entered what can only be described as religion.
I strongly agree with this. Too many people have the Arthur C Clarke quote infecting their brains.
So much of science is contingent on the physical world and cannot be determined from first principles i.e. by thinking hard about it. (Sorry Plato, you can’t think your way to the moon.) You need increasingly precise measurements, which means increasingly complex tools which means…supply chains. Science requires supply chains. Magic doesn’t.
- jsnell
Native americans had like a 95% population mortality rate from infectious diseases in the first generation of European settlement, no? Measles, smallpox, flu, etc.
The mortality rate from those diseases was higher than today because the population had no immunity at all, leading to both higher transmission rates and higher mortality rates. This would be true of an engineered virus as well.
And it wasn't just the one virus, it was an entire continent's infectious disease arsenal landing in overlapping waves. Again, something you'd do if you were trying to maximize damage.
So I don't find the bulk of the article about it being impossible for a virus to have this effect all that compelling.
- Protostome
Obviously, the scenario portrayed in The Economist article is a little far-fetched. I agree that a teenager won’t plan a deadly virus with ChatGPT anytime soon.
But I think the overarching argument here is mostly correct, a lot of really complicated science has been democratized to the point where it is much more accessible. You don’t need a team of brilliant molecular biologists, biochemists, and bioinformaticians to do what you can do with a few agents today. And the pace is increasing. this is the nature of exponential improvement when you approach what Kurzweil popularly call "singularity"
Sure, today, peptide inhibitors and enzyme design are still out of reach for many tasks, I know because that's what I also, as the post authoer, do for a living for the past 15 years. However, only five years ago, protein structure prediction was an open problem, and everyone in our field now regards it as solved.
I’m not worried about a lone wolf taking advantage of AI to design viruses, but I’m concerned that the bar has been lowered to the point where many rogue governments or terrorist organizations can now access tools and skills that were previously available to very few people with a prohibitively high price tag.
The author here looks at the problem with the tunnel vision of a scientist well versed in the field. I know because I’m one as well, but experience has taught me to be more concerned about the unknown unknowns. There could be a team somewhere working on something we have […]
- woopwoop
The author seems to be arguing that it is biologically impossible or something to have a virus with the same transmission properties as COVID but higher virulence. I don't understand what principle he is invoking to make this claim.
- Footnote7341
Everyone is gathering around patting themselves on the back, but smallpox depopulated an entire continent. Clearly it is possible for a highly transmittable deadly virus to exist.
- Metacelsus
Just because the author can't think of a way to cause mass death with an engineered virus, doesn't mean an AI won't be able to think of one.
(There are several biological threats the author hasn't considered. I'll just leave it at that.)
- colingauvin
Oh my God THANK YOU.
I do not have the words how tired I am of hearing tech people and economists talk about biology.
- 01284a7e
"The problems with which the universe can confront any society are, for practical purposes, infinite in number and endless in variety." - Joseph Tainter
AI will really aid the universe in generating more problems. Maybe it's not a supervirus, but hell, maybe it is.