Testing CRISPR genome edits of pathogens is playing with fire. I hope it takes a small incident for someone to pull the plug on all these moronic biolabs rather than a big one. Or else the $1000 smallpox hell will be a reality quite soon.

> Testing CRISPR genome edits of pathogens is playing with fire

This has nothing to do with the article

It has everything to do with not dying though.

Agree. Personally I'm strong on "AI has real risks", which are mostly inflated beliefs in what it tells us. The protocols for drug testing are so high AI (if it works) is most likely to reduce prescreening delay, and if it had a risk it would be ignoring novel forms which don't conform to training, not high lethality: the drug test regimen deals with that already.

Unless it includes mRNA which tricks your cells into making a highly contagious virus which kills a year after infection... then it just takes a single test. Which probably assumes a perfectly malicious superintelligence and is still well within the realm of science fiction... but even trialling a drug in mice is ultimately "testing in prod."

A whole virus worth of mRNA would be a lot of mRNA (though, a prion wouldn't be) and I think we'd notice it happening.

I'm assuming you mean 'We' as the US. Assuming everyone holds high standards may be a mistake.

Am not aware of any non-US countries having issues with this either.

The US is actually too strict, which is why we don't have any of the good sunscreens.

One could imagine a sufficiently advanced AI coming up with drugs which are designed to appear harmless in drug trials despite still being dangerous, either because it legitimately wants to murder us or because its learning function will be incredibly biased towards passing drug trials. I mean, we already sometimes do that (see the Thalidomide Tradgedy), but presumably AI can do it faster and more efficiently in ways that we would struggle to anticipate.