Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological threat creation

Re:Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological... by printerphobia on Wednesday January 31, 2024 @02:48PM (#39208426)

>biological threat creation process (ideation, acquisition, magnification, formulation, and release)

I remember watching a hacker/programmer who was livestreaming how to datamine the rna of the corona virus when covid first started. One of the crazy things he rambled about was how cheap it is for a layman to download a copy of it and synthesize it with some rna printing service. I haven't thought about that possibility before and was terrified. You mean you can create a bioweapon out of bytes?!?

The only thing that brought me comfort at the time was knowing that I was on a niche part of the internet and most normal people in the height of a pandemic would not be thinking about how to make a bad situation worse (except for these hacker types who are always thinking about offense/defense). And that the terrorists who would do it probably don't have the skills to pull it off.

Now with these LLMs, I'm not so sure anymore.

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Re:Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological... by fbhabbed on Wednesday January 31, 2024 @03:11PM (#39208734)

Was it Geohot?

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Re:Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological... by printerphobia on Wednesday January 31, 2024 @03:15PM (#39208772)

Yea I think so

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Re:Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological... by habinero on Wednesday January 31, 2024 @10:06PM (#39212356)

Then I wouldn't be that worried about it.

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Re:Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological... by Fomite on Wednesday January 31, 2024 @05:08PM (#39210100)

This has been a thing people have been worried about for my entire career, and it has never manifested as a real threat. "Step 1" in creating a bioweapon is pretty easy, but there's a whole pathway between that and a deployable weapon.

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Re:Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological... by XorNot on Wednesday January 31, 2024 @07:50PM (#39211648)

The sad thing about the pandemic is the number of people who still don't know what a virus is, and that it's not "DNA".

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Re:Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological... by nradov on Wednesday January 31, 2024 @10:48PM (#39212549)

LLMs change nothing. The sequences for various viruses are going to be published or leaked whether anyone involved uses LLMs or not. It's a total red herring.

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Re:Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological... by dTal on Thursday February 01, 2024 @09:47AM (#39216533)

A big value proposition of LLMs is their ability to synthesize and remix. Sure, you can access viral sequences today, but with an LLM you might be able to say "given these covid variants, make me a version as deadly as the first one and as virulent as the latest variant".

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Re:Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological... by nradov on Thursday February 01, 2024 @10:48AM (#39217179)

That's not how viruses work.

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Re:Building an early warning system for LLM-aided biological... by anonymouskimmer on Friday February 02, 2024 @02:58PM (#39233401)

Especially once you start mixing in immune system priming from prior exposure and vaccination.

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