A test shows the danger of artificial intelligence. Scientists see the development of 40,000 toxins in a few hours as a “wake-up call”.
Kassel – The scientists themselves are surprised: A computer created a total of 40,000 possible chemical weapons in just six hours. Some are said to be as toxic as the neurotoxin VX.
The well-known poison kills in just a few minutes and is one of the most toxic substances on earth. It can be absorbed through the skin, eyes or respiratory tract. In February 2017, Kim Jong-un’s half-brother was allegedly killed with the drug VX, according to the afp news agency.
Chemical Weapons: Normally, the AI creates medicines
Computational chemistry research is actually about developing drugs for rare diseases. Researchers from Collaborations Pharmaceuticals (USA) only carried out the poison experiment on request, writes the business magazine t3n.de.
Spiez had requested Convergence. This conference is about possible impact of science on the biological weapons conventions*, so t3n.
Computers with deadly recipes: AI has created many poisons in a short time
For the somewhat different experiment, the researchers ran their artificial intelligence (AI) in reverse. Usually, the AI studies toxicity (toxicity) of molecules to create safe drugs.
The test should show how dangerous such AI can be when used for the wrong interests. The lead author of the experiment, Fabio Urbina, told the American media network The Verge. The results were published on March 7, 2022 in the research journal nature machine intelligence.
Death from the computer: According to the researchers, the results are a “wake-up call”.
The results of the test must be understood as a “wake-up call”, the researchers wrote in their publication at the beginning of March. According to the editors, the production of poisons, or chemical or biological warfare agents, would be greatly simplified by machine learning.
In the experiment, the AI produced many known toxins, including the dangerous neurotoxin VX. Some of the toxins are even deadlier than VX, Urbina said. In their publication, the researchers did not go into too much detail so as not to give away too much information on the extraction of the toxin.
Danger from the computer: with little knowledge of the poison weapon
It doesn’t take much to create the fabrics, says Urbina. Knowledge of how to use the Python program, the right data sets (from the Internet) and two to three days’ time would probably be enough.
The researchers hope that many scientists will be made aware of this or similar scenarios. In addition, a way of dealing with the freely accessible data sets had to be found. As important as free access is for research, it can be dangerous for people in the area of chemistry and toxins. (lm) *wlz.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
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