> There’s no need for an LLM, just a phd in virology, a decent lab, and a handful of grad students.
You are missing the forest for the trees. The existing virologist PhDs and the GoF labs are a scarce resource. The model makes the same scarce knowledge accessible to many more malicious actors.
Quit being pedantic and try to understand the concept I'm expressing, not just semantically parse my sentence looking for the first quibble.
There are only a few dozen PhDs working the BSL-4+ labs worldwide. And they have state security and state intelligence services constantly monitoring them. The BSL-1 workers (a few thousand like you mention) have access to only much lower risk bio assets/risks.
And the underlying message is that the LLM empowers 8 billion people to do some of what those scarce dozens are doing.
You are missing the forest for the trees. The existing virologist PhDs and the GoF labs are a scarce resource. The model makes the same scarce knowledge accessible to many more malicious actors.