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jacquesm • today at 8:30 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

You terrorist. And internally they're doing biological warfare and terrorism simulations. For science, of course.

"The worry is that, while right now you need to be a skilled virologist to know what components to order or how to grow and spread a bioweapon, AI tools might eventually make it possible for a rogue state, or a rogue group, or an individual, to do all this without virology expertise.

For a while, Anthropic tested whether Claude could assist a terrorist in developing a biological weapon in the obvious way: It assigned testers who had, say, an undergraduate degree in chemistry but no real virology training to try to use Claude to plan an effective mass terror event. Then it scored the attempt by how close it might have come to success.

Early in 2026, it noticed that Claude, attempting the task by itself, did better than a human aided by Claude did at coming up with a workable plan."

https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/what-i-saw-inside-anthropic