This was coming for a while. For years now there have been job postings for ai safety and not really what people expect. Jobs in places like RAND, funded off DOD grants, exploring the feasibility of building a bioweapon with off the shelf tooling and measuring how far along these tools are. Maybe they figured out it was too easy now, and this is the clamping down we are seeing in response.

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godwinson__4-8 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This feels like the sort of claim one should provide a source for. Sounds fairly far fetched to me.

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asdff 2 hours ago | parent [-]

What part? The job posts are factual. There are still some up on rand career website although the bio specific ones are all filled now. Here is their department page on the subject where they cover the scoping (1). Mirror biology seems like something out of sci fi but it is one of their main efforts it seems so the theory must hold some water. There's also concern about bioweaponry and pandemics. The rest is me connecting the dots.

1. https://www.rand.org/global-and-emerging-risks/centers/ai-se...

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godwinson__4-8 an hour ago | parent [-]

Obviously the job posts were not what was in question. If you were "just connecting the dots" aka making stuff up then thanks that tells me all I need to know.

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ianm218 an hour ago | parent [-]

> Maybe they figured out it was too easy now, and this is the clamping down we are seeing in response

His post was from the start thinking out loud. It’s a solid contribution. It seems against the spirit of the forum here to respond to someone unauthoritatively thinking out loud with “you’re just making stuff up!”

	▲	godwinson__4-8 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Sorry. I didn't mean to be that way. I just don't think it's plausible even as a thought experiment. Making a bioweapon seems too complicated where some text based prompt/response is going to suddenly eliminate the barrier. Knowing at a high level how a bioweapon works and actually making and deploying one are two very different things. It doesn't strike me as a plausible reason to stop an LLM release. Surely you can also Google such topics. ^ hopefully this feedback was more in keeping with your views on the "spirit of this forum".

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asadotzler 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

How does this account for the Chinese models that are the ones people will use if they can't use OAI's or Anthropic's. Last time I checked, the US president doesn't have the ability to regulate the Chinese models. Considering this, do you still stand by your maybe?

	▲	asdff 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Maybe they are looking into those too and a ban might be on the horizon. President makes their own rules now and controls the supreme court, you can't consider precedent anymore.
	▲	sixothree 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I really don't think this administration is capable of thinking strategically enough for that. I'm starting to think we lost the AI war about two weeks ago at 5:21.