Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Bloomberg reporter Riley Griffin
Speaker 1: has a pretty unique beat.
Speaker 2: I am a healthcare reporter and I'm based here in Washington, DC,
Speaker 2: and I have a particular interest in where health and
Speaker 2: national security meet.
Speaker 1: And there's been no shortage of stories at that intersection
Speaker 1: of health and national security since the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 2: We were all incredibly humbled by that moment. And I think,
Speaker 2: you know, prior I had been really focused on the
Speaker 2: pipelines of pharmaceutical companies and how they were going to
Speaker 2: ensure a profitable and booming business. I was not thinking
Speaker 2: about healthcare as something that threatened our economy or threatened
Speaker 2: our ability to act in everyday normal ways.
Speaker 1: Newly alert to the possibility that it could be a threat,
Speaker 1: Riley was intrigued when she got a tip.
Speaker 2: I heard this from government officials who witnessed the briefing
Speaker 2: by a guy who had walked in with a black box.
Speaker 1: A black box, and that briefing wasn't held just anywhere.
Speaker 2: He brought that black box in with him to the
Speaker 2: Eisenhower Executive Office Building EEO B. That's the building right
Speaker 2: next to the West wing. Really, it's where a lot
Speaker 2: of White House staffers are.
Speaker 1: Riley says she talked with several people who were in
Speaker 1: that meeting, and they told her that inside that small
Speaker 1: plastic container.
Speaker 2: Were test tubes with synthetic DNA.
Speaker 1: Synthetic DNA that included ingredients that could be used to
Speaker 1: make deadly diseases. That was frightening enough, but Riley's sources
Speaker 1: told her what really startled them was when they found
Speaker 1: out how that guy, a former UN weapons inspector, had
Speaker 1: figured out what to put into those test tubes. It
Speaker 1: was with the help of an AI chatbot.
Speaker 2: He had his team basically pretending to be a bioterrorist.
Speaker 2: If a biotean art wanted better instructions on how to
Speaker 2: create a biological weapon or help with the process of
Speaker 2: actually making that in a laboratory, what would it ask,
Speaker 2: What would it need to know?
Speaker 1: They typed in questions and they got answers, But it
Speaker 1: wasn't just recipes what to do with that synthetic DNA,
Speaker 1: Riley says. Those government officials heard about how that chatbot
Speaker 1: recommended where to put pathogens and how to deploy them
Speaker 1: to do the most damage, which raised an alarming question.
Speaker 2: If a bad actor could acquire the synthetic DNA and
Speaker 2: the instructions to put it together in a lab, what
Speaker 2: would that mean.
Speaker 1: I'm David Gura and this is the big take from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News today on the show, how information that could
Speaker 1: be used to make bioweapons slipped through AI safeguards and
Speaker 1: what that tells us about the challenges of regulating is
Speaker 1: still pretty brand new technology. Of course, information about how
Speaker 1: to create deadly weapons of all kinds is out there
Speaker 1: and it has been for a while. Information that could
Speaker 1: help weaponize diseases are buried in books, and Riley Griffin
Speaker 1: says they're online if you know where to look.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of information on the Internet about viruses, pathogens,
Speaker 2: respiratory illnesses, fungal diseases, right, And the reality is there's
Speaker 2: a lot of information on Google that is dangerous when
Speaker 2: it comes to the field of biology.
Speaker 1: I asked Riley, what's different now? What could a bad actor,
Speaker 1: a bioterrorist do with an AI chatbot that he couldn't
Speaker 1: do with a standard search engine.
Speaker 2: One thing that really struck me through the interview process
Speaker 2: was just hearing from some of the researchers explain how good.
Speaker 2: The chatbot was in the brainstorming phase in offering up
Speaker 2: ideas that weren't necessarily in the first place.
Speaker 1: AI companies know that their transformative technology has a lot
Speaker 1: of potential perils, and they're also aware of the damage
Speaker 1: it could do, not just to their business models. So
Speaker 1: many of them have tried to get ahead of a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff, and Anthropic is one of them.
Speaker 1: It was founded by people who had worked at Open Ai.
Speaker 2: Nanthropic was created really with a bent towards safety. They
Speaker 2: wanted to put in checks and balances, test these things
Speaker 2: out before they reached the public, and commercialize at a
Speaker 2: little bit of a slower pace at the time.
Speaker 1: It was Anthropic who hired that former UN weapons inspector
Speaker 1: who brought that black box to the heart of Washington.
Speaker 1: His name is Rocco Casa Grande, and Anthropic hired him
Speaker 1: to put its AI chatbot, Claude through its paces.
Speaker 2: So that's the origin of this story. He had vested
Speaker 2: it out with a team for more than one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty hours. He had virologists, microbiologists really examining what
Speaker 2: it is could and couldn't do, and so they went
Speaker 2: through that process and what they found scared Casa Grande.
Speaker 1: He was concerned by how simple it was to get
Speaker 1: pretty accurate instructions for how to make bioweapons and how
Speaker 1: to maximize harm. But Riley says something else made Casa
Speaker 1: Grande even more worried.
Speaker 2: Another notable piece that was shared with me was the
Speaker 2: chatbots could advise on how to acquire the materials, where
Speaker 2: to go purchasing them, and how to evade scrutiny when
Speaker 2: doing so. Some companies that sell the synthetic DNA this
Speaker 2: man made DNA, you know, look to know their customer.
Speaker 2: They want to see who is purchasing this. Is this
Speaker 2: a researcher at the CDC? Is this an academic who
Speaker 2: studies ebola? If not, you know, a red flag is raised.
Speaker 1: But Riley says not all companies that sell man made
Speaker 1: DNA have or follow strict protocols.
Speaker 2: Like with all companies, there's a varying level of commitment
Speaker 2: to that cause, and the chatbok could recommend where to
Speaker 2: look that might be better at evading such scrutiny.
Speaker 1: That motivated Cossa Grande to put together that black box
Speaker 1: and to carry it with him into one of the
Speaker 1: most secure office buildings in the world. He called it
Speaker 1: a stunt, but he wanted to make a point, and
Speaker 1: Riley says it resonated with the people Cossa Grande met with.
Speaker 2: He really struck the imagination of Washington with that black box.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break, how government officials responded to
Speaker 1: Roco Costa Grande's black box warning and what that could
Speaker 1: mean for everything from AI safety to our ability to
Speaker 1: treat and cure diseases. Just a few months after Roco
Speaker 1: Cassa Grande's briefing, in October of last year, President Joe
Speaker 1: Biden called for greater oversight of government funded research and
Speaker 1: new safety protocols for tech companies and AI developers to.
Speaker 3: Realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk. We
Speaker 3: need to govern this technology, not and there's no other
Speaker 3: way around it. In my view, it must be governed.
Speaker 1: He laid out a new way for AI companies to
Speaker 1: think about the threats posed by the technologies they're creating.
Speaker 3: I'm about to sign an executive order, an executive order
Speaker 3: that is most significant action any government anywhere in the
Speaker 3: world has ever taken on AI safety, security, and trust.
Speaker 1: Well since then, Bloomberg's Riley Griffin says the debate over
Speaker 1: AI regulation in Washington has gotten louder and more urgent
Speaker 1: since October.
Speaker 2: There's really begun in earnest a serious conversation about regulation
Speaker 2: and or what steps can be taken without hard and
Speaker 2: fast rules, just to limit the risks. So this is
Speaker 2: top of mind. Every agency is thinking about it, of
Speaker 2: Homeland Security, Commerce Department, the Department of Defense. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's a full government conversation.
Speaker 1: Late last year, Vice President Kamala Harris announced the establishment
Speaker 1: of the US Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute, and in her remarks,
Speaker 1: Harris specifically singled out AI made bioweapons as a threat.
Speaker 4: From AI enabled cyber attacks at a scale beyond anything
Speaker 4: we've seen before to AI formulated bioweapons that could endanger
Speaker 4: the lives of millions of people. These threats are often
Speaker 4: referred to as the existential threats of AI, because of course,
Speaker 4: they could endanger the very existence of humanity. These threats,
Speaker 4: without question, are profound and they demand global action.
Speaker 1: But at the same time as the government has put
Speaker 1: up new guardrails, some researchers are saying not so fast.
Speaker 2: Nobody wants to stop or certainly many including in the
Speaker 2: scientific world, do not want to stop the innovation that
Speaker 2: AI is contributing to around new treatments and diseases and
Speaker 2: ways of diagnosing healthcare conditions. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: benefits that scientists point to that they fear could be
Speaker 2: hindered by regulation.
Speaker 1: One hundred and seventy four academics have signed a letter
Speaker 1: pledging to use AI in their research responsibly. They argue
Speaker 1: that when it comes to AI, its benefits quote far
Speaker 1: outweigh the potential for harm. Riley says, they're advocating for
Speaker 1: a more measured approach to regulation.
Speaker 2: You know, a focus of the letter is we recognize
Speaker 2: there are some risks, but hold up, we don't want
Speaker 2: to limit the progress that can be achieved. We can
Speaker 2: do good things with these tools, and that is a priority,
Speaker 2: and we promise to move forward with that work while
Speaker 2: practicing safe behaviors around the for example, only purchasing synthetic
Speaker 2: DNA from kind of reliable providers, which isn't again an
Speaker 2: AI question, but there's a it's not just AI. It's
Speaker 2: kind of a broader conversation about security in the field
Speaker 2: of biology. As technology advances.
Speaker 1: Some critics decry what's being called AI doomerism. What they
Speaker 1: see as a misplaced worry that generative AI poses an
Speaker 1: existential threat to humanity.
Speaker 2: Some people think the conversation about biological threats and AI
Speaker 2: is a.
Speaker 1: Distraction, and Riley notes that while Casa Grande and his
Speaker 1: team were able to do something with that chatbot that
Speaker 1: is objectively scary, the test they ran led to a
Speaker 1: positive outcome.
Speaker 2: My reporting suggests that these initial briefings were really the
Speaker 2: beginning point of a massive undertaking by government to think
Speaker 2: about biological risk in a new way in the wake
Speaker 2: of a pandemic, but also in the wake of a
Speaker 2: fast moving emerging technology.
Speaker 1: And those meetings also led to calls for a broader
Speaker 1: conversation so that it's not just the largest AI companies
Speaker 1: like Anthropic and Open Ai that are briefing government officials.
Speaker 2: You know, one interesting comment that I've heard is many
Speaker 2: would like to see smaller AI companies more present in
Speaker 2: the room. It's the biggest players that are engaged with
Speaker 2: government on this subject, but some of the smaller companies,
Speaker 2: particularly those tailored to biological data, may not have as
Speaker 2: active of a voice.
Speaker 1: The debate continues, and according to Riley, the trend is
Speaker 1: looking better than it was last year when she got
Speaker 1: that tip about that black box.
Speaker 2: Hopefully we're at a place where it's harder to get
Speaker 2: that information from the chatbots.
Speaker 1: One of Anthropics founders told Riley the company has made
Speaker 1: changes to address vulnerabilities Cosa Grande and his team identified,
Speaker 1: but more work is needed.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: Riley says she doesn't want the takeaway from this story
Speaker 1: to be one of fear, but more so about how
Speaker 1: we think about what we do when there is so
Speaker 1: much innovation happening in so many places.
Speaker 2: You know, what I want the takeaway from the story
Speaker 2: to be is not that we are in a doomsday
Speaker 2: scenario where the worst is here and present and going
Speaker 2: to impact us tomorrow. It's more around the nuance of
Speaker 2: a debate about how to regulate a fast moving technology.
Speaker 2: And I think everybody knows that there's a question around
Speaker 2: regulation of AI because AI is accessible, but the field
Speaker 2: of biology is not so present in that conversation, and
Speaker 2: we talk about synthetic biology or this kind of revolution
Speaker 2: in the field of biology. It is moving just as quickly,
Speaker 2: so that will be kind of my note is what
Speaker 2: happens when too fast moving revolutionary technologies crash into each other.
Speaker 1: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Thomas lou It was fact
Speaker 1: checked by Alex Segura. It was mixed by Robert Williams.
Speaker 1: Our senior producers are Naomi Shaven and Kim Gittleson, who
Speaker 1: also edited this episode along with Becca Greenfield. Our senior
Speaker 1: editor is Elizabeth Ponso, Nicole Beemster bor is. Our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for listening. Please follow and review The Big Take wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. It helps new listeners find the show.
Speaker 1: We'll be back on Monday.