US Senators Concerned About Artificial Intelligence: Potential for Biological Attacks

(Patria) - Both Democratic and Republican senators expressed concern on Tuesday about the potential for malicious use of artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on the possibility of its use for creating a biological attack, Reuters reported.

At a hearing before a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dario Amodei, CEO of the AI company Anthropic, said that AI could help otherwise unskilled malicious actors develop biological weapons.

"Certain steps in the production of biological weapons involve knowledge that cannot be found on Google or in textbooks and requires a high level of expertise," said Amodei, whose company worked with biosafety experts on a study of biological risks arising from AI.

"We found that today's AI tools can fulfill some of these steps," he said.

Amodei said that AI is not yet capable of assisting in the creation of biological weapons, calling it a "medium-term" risk.

"By enabling many other actors to carry out large-scale biological attacks, we believe this poses a serious threat to the national security of the United States," he said.

Subcommittee Chairman Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, sounded the alarm.

"The experts who are building these systems are warning of human extinction," he said in his opening remarks.

"The purpose of this discussion is to lay the groundwork for legislation. To move from general principles to concrete recommendations. To use this hearing to write laws," he added.

Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, called for safeguards "that will ensure that this new technology is actually good for the American people."

The hearing comes days after artificial intelligence companies, including OpenAI, Alphabet, and Meta Platforms, voluntarily committed to the White House last week to implement measures such as watermarking AI-generated content to make the technology safer.

Since generative artificial intelligence, which uses data to create new content like ChatGPT's human-sounding prose, made headlines earlier this year, lawmakers around the world have begun to consider how to mitigate the dangers of the new technology for national security and the economy.