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Opinion: The AI threat to public health no one is thinking about: a fake bioterrorist attack
As a public health official, Jay K. Varma has handled putative anthrax attacks. He says an AI-simulated bioterror attack could cause real-world chaos.
On the long list of ways that leading thinkers warn AI could end humanity is one that feels very comic-book villain: helping a rogue actor use modern biology tools to synthesize a lethal pathogen that would “cause more than a billion deaths in a matter of months.”
While I am deeply concerned about the long-term existential threat of AI and synthetic biology to create new or modified pathogens, my extensive experience detecting and controlling outbreaks around the world makes me fear a more immediate threat: a rogue actor using existing AI tools to simulate a bioterrorism attack that would destabilize a region or the world.
