I think there is a good reason to focus more on novice uplift than expert uplift: there are significantly more novices out there than experts.
To use a dumb simple model, say that only 1 in a million people is insane enough to want to kill millions of people if given the opportunity. If there’s 300 million americans, but only 200 thousand biology PhDs, that means we expect there to be 300 crazy novices out there, but only 0.2 crazy biology PhD’s. The numerical superiority of the former group may outweigh the greater chance of success of the latter group.
Thanks for your comment! The base rate argument is reasonable, and I agree that in absolute numbers there are far more potential novice threat actors than expert ones.
But I think timing matters. Expert uplift is a leading indicator—by the time a model is good enough to meaningfully help a novice with no bio background complete a reverse genetics workflow, it’s been helping people with partial expertise clear their specific bottlenecks for much longer. So I’d frame it less as “novice uplift doesn’t matter” and more as “if we wait for novice uplift to show up in studies, we’ve already missed the window where expert uplift became dangerous.” Measuring expert uplift first gives us an earlier warning signal.
Also worth noting that the “crazy expert” bucket isn’t as empty as the simple model suggests; Aum Shinrikyo’s bio program was led by people with graduate degrees, and the 2001 anthrax attacks were likely carried out by a senior USAMRIID researcher. The base rate of “expert with intent” may be low, but it’s not zero, and the expected damage per attempt is much higher.
Matches my intuition, I think there aren’t that many experts and some of them already know how to make dangerous viruses and/or already have access to the labs. Practically speaking between 2027-2028 I’d assume the main uplift will be for people with like a bachelors in bio or chem and good at using frontier AI.
Also underrated: being able to quickly gather a list of biology experts and biology labs that work on dangerous stuff near you with a break down of how deadly/contagious each is. Don’t need to be an expert to rob a bank. Yesterday a friend who goes to Hopkins sent me a photo of a poster in front of a lab in the hallway that said “ZIKA VIRUS IS USED IN THIS LAB DO NOT PASS THROUGH AS A SHORTCUT”
I think there is a good reason to focus more on novice uplift than expert uplift: there are significantly more novices out there than experts.
To use a dumb simple model, say that only 1 in a million people is insane enough to want to kill millions of people if given the opportunity. If there’s 300 million americans, but only 200 thousand biology PhDs, that means we expect there to be 300 crazy novices out there, but only 0.2 crazy biology PhD’s. The numerical superiority of the former group may outweigh the greater chance of success of the latter group.
Thanks for your comment! The base rate argument is reasonable, and I agree that in absolute numbers there are far more potential novice threat actors than expert ones.
But I think timing matters. Expert uplift is a leading indicator—by the time a model is good enough to meaningfully help a novice with no bio background complete a reverse genetics workflow, it’s been helping people with partial expertise clear their specific bottlenecks for much longer. So I’d frame it less as “novice uplift doesn’t matter” and more as “if we wait for novice uplift to show up in studies, we’ve already missed the window where expert uplift became dangerous.” Measuring expert uplift first gives us an earlier warning signal.
Also worth noting that the “crazy expert” bucket isn’t as empty as the simple model suggests; Aum Shinrikyo’s bio program was led by people with graduate degrees, and the 2001 anthrax attacks were likely carried out by a senior USAMRIID researcher. The base rate of “expert with intent” may be low, but it’s not zero, and the expected damage per attempt is much higher.
Matches my intuition, I think there aren’t that many experts and some of them already know how to make dangerous viruses and/or already have access to the labs. Practically speaking between 2027-2028 I’d assume the main uplift will be for people with like a bachelors in bio or chem and good at using frontier AI.
Also underrated: being able to quickly gather a list of biology experts and biology labs that work on dangerous stuff near you with a break down of how deadly/contagious each is. Don’t need to be an expert to rob a bank. Yesterday a friend who goes to Hopkins sent me a photo of a poster in front of a lab in the hallway that said “ZIKA VIRUS IS USED IN THIS LAB DO NOT PASS THROUGH AS A SHORTCUT”