alt Hacker NewsClosed-weight models can also pose biological risk, arguably more so than open-weight models, given the fact that they're being used by state actors (the United States military) to kill people right now.
Who should we fear more? All of collective humanity with the keys to build destructive (and defensive) stuff with AI, or small groups of elites, billionaires, and state actors who have the monopoly on violence and want to control the keys?
Open-weight models collectivize access and ability to do more for a greater good, and the expense of a frankly low-risk possibility that some randos want to use it for very bad things.
Closed-weight models keep the control in the hands of the few that actually are doing the harm to the world, and the rest of us have no way to stop it or defend.
> Who should we fear more? All of collective humanity with the keys to build destructive (and defensive) stuff with AI, or small groups of elites, billionaires, and state actors who have the monopoly on violence and want to control the keys?
I'd trust the latter and I think it's an easy choice. I'm sure it feels bad to not be in the group with access to the scary weapons, but do remember that out of your two groups, the "collective humanity" one is the one with the literal terrorists, which do in fact exist and aren't a myth. For comparison, observe how the concentration of ability to produce nuclear weaponry in the hands of only a few states did, historically, work to prevent both a nuclear war and any nuclear terrorism.
> And the rest of us have no way to stop it or defend.
If you did have access, what'd be your defense plan? Biorisk is one of the most attacker-favoring fields imaginable, so a world where there's an equilibrium between attackers and defenders in bioweaponry research (the same way cybersecurity currently works) would be quite terrible. Your best bet would probably be to take a new vaccine each time a new engineered disease comes out, and hope that you're never one of the suckers who got infected before the vaccine was developed, and that the accumulated side effects from multiple experimental vaccines don't kill you too quickly.