How AI can be used for bioterrorism
Humanity has climbed to the top of the food chain, but as the pandemic demonstrated, it’s a precarious perch. It’s not just directly pathogenic viruses that we need to worry about, either. Small molecules and proteins synthesized by bacteria also pose a risk to life, to crops and livestock, and to the environment. These risks would be realized by a terrorist through genetic engineering, the means by which new capabilities are introduced to an organism through changes in its DNA. This is a time-consuming and laborious process that can be vastly accelerated with AI and biological design tools. A terrorist might design a novel virus that causes human illness, one which kills livestock, makes soil infertile, or fouls the ocean.