A bipartisan bill co-sponsored by a North Carolina Republican and a Massachusetts Democrat is intended to address the risks of misuse of artificial intelligence, particularly with regard to the development of biological or chemical weapons.
Senator Ted Budd said the legislation would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to develop a strategy for public health preparedness and response, because the country, “Cannot be caught flat-footed on these threats and should begin to prepare now.”
Budd outlined a 2019 study published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence that explored how AI could be used to design new chemical weapons. The paper’s authors found that AI could be used to quickly and efficiently design new compounds that were highly toxic.
Another study, conducted by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found Large Language Models in chatbot platforms can help people without laboratory training to develop viruses highlighted as pandemic threats.
