One thing that comes to mind is test time compute, and Figure 3 of Language Monkeys paper is quite concerning, where even Pythia-70M (with an “M”) is able to find signal on problems that at first glance are obviously impossible for it to make heads or tails of (see also). If there is an algorithmic unlock, a Llama-3-405B (or Llama-4) might suddenly get much more capable if fed a few orders of magnitude more inference compute than normal. So the current impression about model capabilities can be misleading about what they eventually enable, using future algorithms and still affordable amounts of compute.
Excellent point Vladimir. My team has been thinking a lot about this issue. What if somebody leaked the latest AlphaFold, and instructions on how to make good use of it? If you could feed the instructions into an existing open-source model, and get functional python code out to interact with the private AlphaFold API you set up… That’s a whole lot more dangerous than an LLM alone!
As the whole space of ‘biological design tools’ (h/t Anjali for this term to describe the general concept) gets more capable and complex, the uplift from an LLM that can help you navigate and utilize these tools gets more dangerous. A lot of these computational tools are quite difficult to use effectively for a layperson, yet an AI can handle them fairly easily if given the documentation.
One thing that comes to mind is test time compute, and Figure 3 of Language Monkeys paper is quite concerning, where even Pythia-70M (with an “M”) is able to find signal on problems that at first glance are obviously impossible for it to make heads or tails of (see also). If there is an algorithmic unlock, a Llama-3-405B (or Llama-4) might suddenly get much more capable if fed a few orders of magnitude more inference compute than normal. So the current impression about model capabilities can be misleading about what they eventually enable, using future algorithms and still affordable amounts of compute.
Excellent point Vladimir. My team has been thinking a lot about this issue. What if somebody leaked the latest AlphaFold, and instructions on how to make good use of it? If you could feed the instructions into an existing open-source model, and get functional python code out to interact with the private AlphaFold API you set up… That’s a whole lot more dangerous than an LLM alone!
As the whole space of ‘biological design tools’ (h/t Anjali for this term to describe the general concept) gets more capable and complex, the uplift from an LLM that can help you navigate and utilize these tools gets more dangerous. A lot of these computational tools are quite difficult to use effectively for a layperson, yet an AI can handle them fairly easily if given the documentation.