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Comment by computerdork | Hacker News Reader

Ah, didn't think of this. Some rogue militia group might try to use this LLM (or create their own LLM based on this work) to help them create biological weapons or to do a mass hacking the infrastructure of targeted country.

Wonder what safeguards Kolibri uses to prevent this? Or if they even can

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I don't think that AI is as much of a boost to bioweapons as people think. Lab work doesn't get easier just because the experiment design part does.

You can simulate things.

Given enough smarts, you can simulate anything. Quantum AI is an active goal.

Mate throughout this thread you've been escalating LLMs to be basically the equivalent of a magic wand.

I think we should stay in reality for now. They write good rust and bad emails.

They also get gold at IMO for 15 dollars and solve Erdos problems.

eh, they are also used extensively in medical research using alpha fold, and in math, and in legal for one thing. And this is of course only the beginning, and IMHO, it'd take a lack of foresight to not start putting layers and layers of safeguards now.

Yeah, to me the hugging face hacking is a harbinger of what's to come, not just in the world of tech but eventually to other fields too.

If I described a computer to you in 1998 I'd have said "they are also used extensively in medical research using alpha fold, and in math, and in legal for one thing." Maybe not alpha fold, idk if that's some new thing. But you get my point? They're a very useful tool, sometimes it feels like magic what we can do with them... But it's not magic. That's why I said magic wand, the OP was implying LLMs can (or soon can) manipulate matter at an atomic level. That's orders of magnitude removed from where we are and I disagree that there's any evidence that LLMs will inevitably reach that point in our lifetimes.

Ah, I see, LLM's aren't able to do incredible things and you were just commenting on that. Sounds reasonable

Chemical and biological warfare is hard. A cult in Japan created a mass casualty event using nerve gas. Which is the only somewhat "successful" terrorist WMD attack I know of. Knowledge of how to create these weapons isn't new. Guns and bombs are the most widely used terror weapons for a reason.

Enter LLMs to help through all those pesky hard parts.

The hard part is probably finding the lab equipment and chemicals without being noticed, and choosing not to use it to manufacture drugs instead which would be much more profitable

Intelligence was never the bottleneck tho

For terrorists it is tho. Four lions is basically a documentary. The only clever and creative terror attack happened 25 years ago.

What's stopping them from using claude today? What could anyone possibly do to stop them from using open models? This line of thought seems like corporate/political/pr pandering more than a meaningful concern.

Didn't Mexican cartels kidnap telco workers to build them separate infra? We expect terrorists to be less resourceful?

Well yes. drug cartels have a revenue source.

Miscreants with even half a braincell will find themselves in illegal drugs business over terrorism.

Political and religious fanatics with even a half a braincell figure out terrorism will only damage their cause.

People who end up as terrorists have already failed the two above tests.

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