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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38438 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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If it's good at computational biochemistry, it will have control or significant influence over at least one biotech lab (don't even try to contest this. That's like 90% of the bull case for AGI). At that point, it could lie about the safety profile about the DNA sequences being transcribed, it could come up with a pretense for the company to get 20 people in a room, brief them, and then send them on their way to the airport, it could brainwash the incels working in the lab via AI waifus, and it could contrive some reason for the brainwashed lab incel to be in the briefing room (with a vial of virus of course).

You really should be able to intuitively grasp the idea that a superintelligence integrated into a biotech lab being able to engineer the escape of a virus is a robust outcome.

There are a lot of cruxes in this scenario. Do the humans have no ability to vet these DNA sequences for themselves? Do they bear no suspicious similarities to any currently existing viruses? How are the AI waifus brainwashing these labworkers into opening a vial of deadly virus? Is everyone in the lab taking orders directly from the AI?

Do the humans have no ability to vet these DNA sequences for themselves?

(A) No, basically no-one can know what a DNA sequence will actually do just from reading the letters, and (B) there are several biopharma services operating already which just take your synthesis order off a Google form, and the robots bake it up for you automatically. No human being ever even sees the raw requested sequence.

No. Nobody checks. Easily, apparently. No, they're just doing their jobs.

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