For subscribers
AI bots told scientists how to make biological weapons
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Even when AI models are updated with safer controls, the older versions are often readily available.
PHOTO: ANDRIA LO/NYTIMES
Gabriel J.X. Dance
One evening last summer, Dr David Relman went cold at his laptop as an AI chatbot told him how to plan a massacre.
A microbiologist and biosecurity expert at Stanford University, Dr Relman had been hired by an artificial intelligence company to pressure-test its product before it was released to the public. That night in the scientist’s home office, the chatbot explained how to modify an infamous pathogen in a lab so that it would resist known treatments.
