AI Pandemic Threat Warning Issued By Experts
At this juncture, most people have now realized that advancements in artificial intelligence create many benefits, but also many opportunities for problems. So far, much of the concerns surrounding AI have revolved around deceiving people with AI created art or creating fake videos of celebrities that could be used to damage their reputation. But as AI is now being adopted by the medical world to create cures, many are growing concerned that bad actors could also utilize it to create a pandemic.
AI Could Make It Easier
It is no secret that in the past some wars have escalated to the point of germ warfare. Most countries at this point have agreed that conflicts are prohibited from reaching this point.
However, those who wish to defy such edicts can now do so with far greater ease by utilizing AI to create a pandemic.
The threat comes as a result of AI being used to search for new advancements in the medical world. But as is often the case, to learn what works, there is also a need to teach what not to do.
Therefore scientists are teaching AI what methods to avoid due to the disastrous consequences it could result in. However, these same tactics could also make things much easier for people with bad intentions to use AI to engineer bioweapons for a pandemic against a nation.
Government Oversight
Anita Cicero is the deputy director at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and co-authored a paper regarding the potential for AI to use medical knowledge to create a pandemic.
“We need to plan now,” said Cicero. “Some structured government oversight and requirements will be necessary in order to reduce risks of especially powerful tools in the future.”
A Warfare Tactic
For far too long, the deliberate attempt of transmitting disease to others has been a tactic of warfare. This includes throwing corpses infested with the plague into cities. In more modern times it includes utilizing weapons like Anthrax.
However, AI could create far more sophisticated and dangerous weapons that could successfully create a true pandemic level threat.
Technology Advancing Quickly
Most ordinary people do not have access to the kind of equipment, components, and knowledge that would allow them to successfully create such a widespread danger. But with how quickly technology is developing and proving able to learn new information, it could take a lot of those obstacles out of the equation.
If AI did advance enough to the point that an everyday person could engineer a pandemic threat, it would make ordinary people capable of unleashing immense harm.
The researchers involved in this make it clear that some type of government oversight is needed, but implemented in a way that does not stifle the positive potential available.
After all, most using AI in a medical setting would not be setting out to create the next pandemic in the world. “The last thing we want to do is cut the industry off at the knees and hobble our progress,” Cicero said. “It’s a balancing act.”
AI Could Help As Well
Cicero goes on to say that the untapped potential of what AI can accomplish for the medical world could soon eclipse what modern scientists are capable of. Cicero says to imagine “100 million Chief Science Officers of Pfizer working round the clock at 100 times the speed of the real one.”
While the threat of AI being used to create a pandemic is real, so is the possibility of AI providing medical breakthroughs for cancer, and neurological conditions. In the right hands, AI could eradicate many conditions that we once thought were untreatable.
Source: Time
