Important bit of history: Kevin Esvelt (head of SecureBio, who I have been working for) invented the Gene Drive back in 2013. He says he was at first scared that the idea could be misused, and thought carefully about the offense-defense balance before concluding that it was safely defense-dominant. He says that he shared his idea only after concluding it was safe.
The reason SecureBio is concerned about other biological threats, and the role AI might play in them, is that there are a wide range of things it is possible to do with genetic engineering. Some of these, unlike Gene Drives, are highly offense dominant and would be really bad for humanity if deployed.
So, in conclusion, I myself have been excited for Gene Drives to get deployed for years now. I think that anti-malaria-hosting-mosquito Gene Drives are very valuable and very safe. I am in fact pretty mad that there has been so much delay, and so many lives negatively impacted by society’s excess caution on this front.
Why are we so overly cautious about things which have lots of evidence to support them being safe, and at the same time so reckless about other things which are genuinely dangerous? I feel frustrated and upset about humanity’s poor collective risk assessment and decision making.
Important bit of history: Kevin Esvelt (head of SecureBio, who I have been working for) invented the Gene Drive back in 2013. He says he was at first scared that the idea could be misused, and thought carefully about the offense-defense balance before concluding that it was safely defense-dominant. He says that he shared his idea only after concluding it was safe.
The reason SecureBio is concerned about other biological threats, and the role AI might play in them, is that there are a wide range of things it is possible to do with genetic engineering. Some of these, unlike Gene Drives, are highly offense dominant and would be really bad for humanity if deployed.
So, in conclusion, I myself have been excited for Gene Drives to get deployed for years now. I think that anti-malaria-hosting-mosquito Gene Drives are very valuable and very safe. I am in fact pretty mad that there has been so much delay, and so many lives negatively impacted by society’s excess caution on this front.
Why are we so overly cautious about things which have lots of evidence to support them being safe, and at the same time so reckless about other things which are genuinely dangerous? I feel frustrated and upset about humanity’s poor collective risk assessment and decision making.