We’ve had it 😬 US researchers use AI to design working viruses for the first time

https://today.rtl.lu/news/science-and-environment/u-s-researchers-use-ai-to-generate-virus-for-the-first-time-500575347

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/46390565

Why. The hell. Is this even being considered, let alone put into practice? This could cause the next pandemic ffs

13 points · 18 comments · view on lemmy.world

18 Comments

fullsquare@awful.systems · 29 pts · 49d (7 replies)

first of all, who the fuck calls you a leader. second of all, you fell for a marketing piece, because if you read it you'd figure that what happened is that some model spewed 700000 candidates, that was filtered down to 285 by actual scientists, then when made and tested it had >90% failure rate (16 viable) and all are closely related to existing phage

"somebody burned square kilometer of rainforest to do phage madlibs" would be more accurate title

AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space · 16 pts · 49d (1 reply)

This, exactly.

This press release, like the chain of “our AI broke containment and hacked into the Pentagon and the World Bank, oops!” brags, serves one purpose: to give the impression that the Skynet Singularity is unfolding and that humanity’s only chance for survival is to cannibalise everything else, from regulations protecting the conditions that allow human life to exist to any activity that’s not racing to build the Computer God before someone else does, in a last-ditch hail-Mary effort to head off the apocalypse, also inflating the AI bubble and allowing the grifters who bet that if you pile up enough Nvidia GPUs, run enough terawatts through them and feed them the shreds of the world’s libraries, you can create God and make him your servant to cash out.

fullsquare@awful.systems · 4 pts · 49d

would you believe that all but one authors are from a single startup?

Carnelian@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 49d (3 replies)

They spun up this account a week ago and make a hundred posts a day that are literally all just uncritical pro-AI propaganda pieces preceded by empty negative qualifying statements lol. Basically an AI booster having a laugh trying to drown out legitimate discussion (for some reason they never seem satisfied just existing in their amazing ai utopia while the rest of us get “left behind”, hmm, wonder why that is).

Hopefully the account is banned in a timely fashion

fullsquare@awful.systems · 1 pts · 48d (2 replies)

good luck cajoling blahaj admins into any timely bans

Carnelian@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 48d (1 reply)

Some drama I’m not aware of? I haven’t followed the affairs of the instance closely but I’ve seen Ada make a lot of good calls over the years

fullsquare@awful.systems · 1 pts · 48d

one of 196 mods did hexbearite entryism for years and was kicked out only recently (2w ago)

Hupf@feddit.org · 2 pts · 48d

pixxelkick@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 49d (2 replies)

The article doesnt link to the original published paper.

That makes it utterly valueless and trash.

Stop posting garbage articles. Did you even verify or try to find if this was even real...?

TheAntiAiLeader@lemmy.blahaj.zone · -3 pts · 49d (1 reply)

Did you click the blue link? That’s the cross post. Click the picture at the top 🙄

pixxelkick@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 49d

... are you daft?

I read the article, this link: https://today.rtl.lu/news/science-and-environment/u-s-researchers-use-ai-to-generate-virus-for-the-first-time-500575347

Which is what the post shares.

What article did you read?

And notice how the article shows no sources, no citing, its basically just clickbait. Garbage.

People need to raise their standards, garbage like this should be down voted into oblivion.

The fact this garbage is upvoted so much shows how the avg person on here is either

A: not reading the links at all and just updates cuz of the clickbait titles

Or

B: reads the article and has zero sense of upholding journalistic integrity.

Yall are really pushing for an echo chamber.

Do. Better.

Almacca@aussie.zone · 4 pts · 49d (1 reply)

Wasn't someone complaining about the Chinese allegedly doing exactly that recently?

Ilixtze@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 49d

Every acusation is a confession, doubly so for the US government.

SuiXi3D@fedia.io · 4 pts · 49d

Oh! Great. So, vaccines will soon be illegal and we’re designing custom viruses to infect the populace. Manufactured epidemic, localized to the US. Good to know my tax dollars are being used for good. 🙄

Kolanaki@pawb.social · 3 pts · 49d (3 replies)

We're in a race to see what brings about the end of the world first:

  • Skynet

  • Gray Goo

  • Zombie plague

fullsquare@awful.systems · 7 pts · 49d (1 reply)

nah it's the usual: greed

Kolanaki@pawb.social · 1 pts · 49d

That's just the motivation, not the thing that directly ends the world.

Almacca@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 49d

Don't forget climate disasters and crop failures, which I think are much more likely.

Or an insect apocalypse.