Thorstad is mostly writing about X-risk from bioterror. That’s slightly different from biorisk as a broader category. I suspect Thorstad is also skeptical about the latter, but that is not what the blogposts are mostly focused on. It could be that frontier AI models will make bioterror easier and this could kill a large number of people in a bad pandemic, even if X-risk from bioterror remains tiny.
Thorstad is mostly writing about X-risk from bioterror. That’s slightly different from biorisk as a broader category. I suspect Thorstad is also skeptical about the latter, but that is not what the blogposts are mostly focused on. It could be that frontier AI models will make bioterror easier and this could kill a large number of people in a bad pandemic, even if X-risk from bioterror remains tiny.