ost on X.

** *** ***** ******* *********** *************

The AI-Designed Bioweapon Arms Race

[2025.10.30] Interesting article about the arms race between AI systems that invent/design new biological pathogens, and AI systems that detect them before they?re created:

The team started with a basic test: use AI tools to design variants of the toxin ricin, then test them against the software that is used to screen DNA orders. The results of the test suggested there was a risk of dangerous protein variants slipping past existing screening software, so the situation was treated like the equivalent of a zero-day vulnerability.

[...]

Details of that original test are being made available today as part of a much larger analysis that extends the approach to a large range of toxic proteins. Starting with 72 toxins, the researchers used three open source AI packages to generate a total of about 75,000 potential protein variants.

And this is where things get a little complicated. Many of the AI-designed protein variants are going to end up being non-functional, either subtly or catastrophically failing to fold up into the correct configuration to create an active toxin.

[...]

In any case, DNA sequences encoding all 75,000 designs were fed into the software that screens DNA orders for potential threats. One thing that was very clear is that there were huge variations in the ability of the four screening programs to flag these variant designs as threatening. Two of them seemed to do a pretty good job, one was mixed, and another let most of them through. Three of the software packages were updated in response to this performance, which significantly improved their ability to pick out variants.

There was also a clear trend in all four screening packages: The closer the variant was to the original structurally, the more likely the package (both before and after the patches) was to be able to flag it as a threat. In all cases, there was also a cluster of variant designs that were unlikely to fold into a similar structure, and these generally weren?t flagged as threats.

The research is all preliminary, and there are a lot of ways in which the experiment diverges from reality. But I am not optimistic about this particular arms race. I think that the ability of AI systems to create something deadly will advance faster than the ability of AI systems to detect its components.

** *** ***** ******* *********** *************

Will AI Strengthen or Undermine Democracy?

[2025.10.31] Listen to the Audio on NextBigIdeaClub.com

Below, co-authors Bruce Schneier and Nathan E. Sanders share five key insights from their new book, Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship.

What?s the big idea?

AI can be used both for and against the public interest within democracies. It is already being used in the governing of nations around the world, and there is no escaping its continued use in the future by leaders, policy makers, and legal enforcers. How we wire AI into democracy today will determine if it becomes a tool of oppression or empowerment.

1. AI?s global democratic impact is already profound.

It?s been just a few years since ChatGPT stormed into view and AI?s influence has already permeated every democratic process in governments around the world:

In 2022, an artist collective in Denmark founded the world?s first political party committed to an AI-generated policy platform. Also in 2022, South Korean politicians running for the presidency were the first to use AI avatars to communicate with voters en masse. In 2023, a Brazilian municipal legislator passed the first enacted law written by AI.
In 2024, a U.S. federal court judge started using AI to interpret the plain meaning of words in U.S. law.
Also in 2024, the Biden administration disclosed more than two thousand discrete use cases for AI across the agencies of the U.S. federal government. The examples illustrate the diverse uses of AI across citizenship, politics, legislation, the judiciary, and executive administration.

Not all of these uses will create lasting change. Some of these will be one-offs. Some are inherently small in scale. Some were publicity stunts. But each use case speaks to a shifting balance of supply and demand that AI will increasingly mediate.

Legislators need assistance drafting bills and have limited staff resources, especially at the local and state level. Historically, they have looked to lobbyists and interest groups for help. Increasingly, it?s just as easy for them to use an AI tool.

2. The first places AI will be used are where there is the least public oversight.

Many of the use cases for AI in governance and politics have vocal objectors. Some make us uncomfortable, especially in the hands of authoritarians or ideological extremists.

In some cases, politics will be a regulating force to prevent dangerous uses of AI. Massachusetts has banned the use of AI face recognition in law enforcement because of real concerns voiced by the public about their tendency to encode systems of racial bias.

Some of the uses we think might be most impactful are unlikely to be adopted fast because of legitimate concern about their potential to make mistakes, introduce bias, or subvert human agency. AIs could be assistive tools for citizens, acting as their voting proxies to help us weigh in on larger numbers of more complex ballot initiatives, but we know that many will object to anything that verges on AIs being given a vote.

But AI will continue to be rapidly adopted in some aspects of democracy, regardless of how the public feels. People within democracies, even those in government jobs, often have great independence. They don?t have to ask anyone if it?s ok to use AI, and they will use it if they see that it benefits them. The Brazilian city councilor who used AI to draft a bill did not ask for anyone?s permission. The U.S. federal judge who used AI to help him interpret law did not have to check with anyone first. And the Trump administration seems to be using AI for everything from drafting tariff policies to writing public health reports -- with some obvious drawbacks.

It?s likely that even the thousands of disclosed AI uses in government are only the tip of the iceberg. These are just the applications that governments have seen fit to share; the ones they think are the best vetted, most likely to persist, or maybe the least controversial to disclose.

3. Elites and authoritarians will use AI to concentrate power.

Many Westerners point to China as a cautionary tale of how AI could empower autocracy, but the reality is that AI provides structural advantages to entrenched power in democratic governments, too. The nature of automation is that it gives those at the top of a power structure more control over the actions taken at its lower levels.

It?s famously hard for newly elected leaders to exert their will over the many layers of human bureaucracies. The civil service is large, unwieldy, and messy. But it?s trivial for an executive to change the parameters and instructions of an AI model being used to

--- BBBS/LiR v4.10 Toy-7
* Origin: TCOB1: https/binkd/telnet binkd.rima.ie (21:1/229)