> It seems very clear to me that when creating custom viruses becomes high school level knowledge
That would be very bad indeed, but there is no path from AI to that. Making custom viruses is never going to be an easy task even if you had a magic machine that could explain the effects of adding any chemical to the mix. You still need to procure the chemicals and work with them in very careful ways, often for a long time, in a highly controlled environment. It's still biology lab work, even if you know exactly what you have to do.
Also, bioweapons already exist and have been used in a few conflicts, even as recently as WWII. They're terrifying in many ways, but are not really comparable to the horror of nuclear weapons hitting major cities.
> You still need to procure the chemicals and work with them in very careful ways, often for a long time, in a highly controlled environment. It's still biology lab work, even if you know exactly what you have to do.
You can get that as-a-Service, and I imagine that successes in computational biology will make mail-order protein synthesis broadly available. At that point, making a bioweapon or creating a grey goo (green goo) scenario will be a divide-and-conquer issue: how many pieces you need to procure independently from different facilities, so that no one suspects what you're doing until you mix them together and the world goes poof.
We know the principles of how to make very powerful and dangerous anorganic compounds today, with extreme precision. Do you see any chemistry-as-a-service products that sell to the general public? Is it easy to obtain the components and expertise to make sarin gas, a clearly existing and much simpler to synthesize substance than some hypothetical green goo bioweapon?
> Do you see any chemistry-as-a-service products that sell to the general public?
Sort of? Depends on how general you insist the general public to be. Never used one myself, but I used to lurk on nootropic and cognitive enhancement groups, and I recall some people claiming they managed to get experimental nootropics synthesized and sent from abroad, without any special license or access. And then there's all the lab supply companies - again, I never tried, but talking with people I never got the impression it's in any way restricted, other than being niche; I never heard them e.g. requiring a verified association with an university lab or something. Hell, back in high school, my classmate managed to get his hand on some uranium salts (half for chemistry nerdom, half for pure bragging rights), with zero problems.
> Is it easy to obtain the components and expertise to make sarin gas, a clearly existing and much simpler to synthesize substance than some hypothetical green goo bioweapon?
Given that I know for a fact that making several kinds of explosives and propellants is a bored middle-schooler level problem, I imagine sarin is also synthesizeable by a smart amateur. Fortunately, the intersection of being able to make it, and having a malicious reason for it, is vanishingly small. But I don't doubt that, should a terrorist group decide to use some of either, there's approximately nothing that can stop from cooking some up.
What makes me more nervous about potential biosafety issues in the future is that, well, sarin is only effective as far as the air circulation will carry it; pathogens have indefinite range.
> Making custom viruses is never going to be an easy task even if you had a magic machine that could explain the effects of adding any chemical to the mix. You still need to procure the chemicals and work with them in very careful ways, often for a long time, in a highly controlled environment. It's still biology lab work, even if you know exactly what you have to do.
You appear to be talking about today. I am referring to some point in the future.
If you extrapolate our technological progress out to the future, it certainly seems possible, at some point.
That would be very bad indeed, but there is no path from AI to that. Making custom viruses is never going to be an easy task even if you had a magic machine that could explain the effects of adding any chemical to the mix. You still need to procure the chemicals and work with them in very careful ways, often for a long time, in a highly controlled environment. It's still biology lab work, even if you know exactly what you have to do.
Also, bioweapons already exist and have been used in a few conflicts, even as recently as WWII. They're terrifying in many ways, but are not really comparable to the horror of nuclear weapons hitting major cities.