Rogue AIs are of course a more speculative actor, but worth taking seriously in my opinion. Conditioned on a rogue AI existing, it’s plausible that a biological weapon of some kind would be among the cheapest ways for it to extort and disempower humanity, given how few industrial inputs it requires relative to other mass-casualty weapons like nukes.
Many people think that if the AI wants to take over, it will just win. But the AI may be in a hurry because it could be deactivated in a year, so it may try to take over when its chances of success are relatively low. I agree that a biological weapon is a plausible route, and that if we were more resilient, the AI would have less leverage. I agree that creating nukes is more difficult, but I am still concerned about the AI getting control of nukes through hacking.
Extensive research by my colleague Adin Richards has shown that non-agricultural food sources, like methanotrophic bacteria and algae grown in photobioreactors, could be a path forward even if we couldn’t grow plants outside anymore. The catch is that it would take a lot of time to get the necessary infrastructure up and running, straining our food reserves.
Additional food storage would certainly help, but getting ready to scale up lower capital food sources that may be resistant to mirror biology would cost a lot less money before the catastrophe. These could include duckweed, microalgae, seaweed, bivalves, surface fish, and mesopelagic (200-600 m deep) fish.
Many people think that if the AI wants to take over, it will just win. But the AI may be in a hurry because it could be deactivated in a year, so it may try to take over when its chances of success are relatively low. I agree that a biological weapon is a plausible route, and that if we were more resilient, the AI would have less leverage. I agree that creating nukes is more difficult, but I am still concerned about the AI getting control of nukes through hacking.
Additional food storage would certainly help, but getting ready to scale up lower capital food sources that may be resistant to mirror biology would cost a lot less money before the catastrophe. These could include duckweed, microalgae, seaweed, bivalves, surface fish, and mesopelagic (200-600 m deep) fish.