James Smith

So if humans are being infected, it's very likely going to be humans.

But insects can also spread diseases very quickly.

So myxomatosis, which is a virus that infects rabbits, is spread by fleas and mosquitoes.

And that was spread in the 1950s around Europe.

at a rate of about 7,000 kilometers per year.

And the circumference of the earth is about 40,000 kilometers for context.

So even if humans weren't infected, which we expect they would be, this could still travel quite quickly.

But even if it's traveling relatively slowly, it's going to be almost impossible to eradicate.

So it seems like once you've introduced it, it's pretty much irreversible.

Yeah, it definitely is quite a bleak picture.

So ways that it could happen.

Someone could invest a lot of money into it.

For example, in industry, if they wanted to develop this to make mirror molecules, which I really don't think would be worthwhile or good, to be clear, but it's something we could imagine happening.

Malicious actor might want to do this if they're trying to cause a huge amount of harm.

And then a rogue AI might want to do this if they were trying to kill a huge number of people.

So people in the AI community are taking this seriously as a threat that could be accelerated by AI.

I think it's likely that transformative AI could accelerate the development of neurobacteria.

But it's worth noting that the steps...

to go from where we are today to making myrobacteria are quite wet lab intensive.

They're all like trial and error kind of projects.