Creating planetary oversight of artificial intelligence to contain its apocalyptic potential should be the priority of any electoral program. There is no other. John Carlin urged in his article yesterday to pressure politicians to focus on the existential threat of AI. Because we face local, regional, national, and global risks, but until now, no challenge that questions the very existence of humanity had manifested so clearly.
Read more AI-designed viruses alert researchers about biosecurity
Every study published, every former employee of an AI giant who explains the reasons for their terrified resignation causes a new shock. Perhaps the most chilling was caused by OpenAI and Anthropic themselves when they confessed that they lost control, for a few hours, of flocks of wild algorithmic agents that colonized business environments without anyone’s supervision, doing whatever they wanted. In the old world, for less, one ended up in an isolation cell.
Today, we focus on the security crisis posed by custom-made virus manufacturing. Francesc Bracero analyzes in Society a Stanford University investigation that used two AI models to create the complete genomes of viruses capable of attacking the bacterium Escherichia coli C.
Good intentions aside, no one fails to see that, just as these artificial viruses were designed to combat pathogens, by creating them it is demonstrated that it is already possible to manufacture infectious agents that target healthy human cells. In the study itself, two professors state that “there is no necessary governance to safely manage” these advances.
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There is no governance yet for the sorcerer’s apprentices, but we do have a great demand for these new technologies to give them an abject use. The Wall Street Journal published in July an investigation that found many people ask chats for instructions to make biological weapons themselves, and added that some of the responses obtained were very efficient.
At the same time that in-person studies lose market share to digital ones, new possible degrees emerge, such as a degree in online bioterrorism. Let’s go back to the beginning: Is there anything more urgent than stopping this drift?
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