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Comment by alach11 | Hacker News Reader

I think some AI safety advocates have been arguing for great controls around nucleotide synthesis (e.g., impose greater data collection requirements or advanced screening for harmful sequences). It's surprisingly easy to order synthesized genes delivered to your doorstop. All you need is a credit card and a nucleotide sequence file!

Developing a bioweapon is already within reach for experts with sufficient funds, time, and motivation. That's more or less what gain-of-function research already does! Fortunately the barrier to entry is high enough that you don't see like... Boko Haram doing this. Or a lone-wolf nutjob. LLMs could definitely lower that barrier to entry though.

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> I think some AI safety advocates have been arguing for great controls around nucleotide synthesis (e.g., impose greater data collection requirements or advanced screening for harmful sequences). It's surprisingly easy to order synthesized genes delivered to your doorstop. All you need is a credit card and a nucleotide sequence file!

So why have the discussion about regulating AI at all if that is the actual problem? Surely instead of blanket blocking everyone's AI models it makes more sense to control the potentially problematic sequencing?

Because there are many legitimate uses for nucleotide synthesis, and we would have to slow scientists down by adding more regulation. The other problem is that it's not like it's very difficult to do it, so a motivated person could still do it even without access to these services.

> Because there are many legitimate uses for nucleotide synthesis, and we would have to slow scientists down by adding more regulation

There are nothing like as many legitimate uses for it than AI, not close, while it's far easier to vet the relatively limited set of people doing it.

> so a motivated person could still do it even without access to these services.

Would this hypothetical person be stopped from doing it by not having an AI to talk to about it? Or could they just use existing literature on the subject? AI doesn't help here one iota. You might as well ban Google for potentially showing people such information.

This, also, is not something that has proven to be a problem.

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