Pandemic Preparation is AI Safety

I am not a big fan of the “now more than ever” post, which interprets recent events to support—surprise!—something the writer already believed. And yet…is it not obvious that AI risk increases the value of pandemic preparation?

If COVID began with a laboratory leak—plausible, though unproven—then a research accident has already killed millions. Whatever its origin, COVID demonstrated the scale of the potential damage. AI surely increases pandemic risks. If you have ever used AI to fix your washing machine, you understand the difference between reading a manual and having a tutor by your side helping to troubleshoot each problem. The same distinction matters for biological research at the laboratory bench.

Anthropic’s threat report documents five cases of researchers using its models in ways that “could support biological weapons development.” These included military-linked virus research and plans for work on pathogens with enhanced pandemic potential. Did the researchers intend to build weapons? We don’t know. But some users circumvented access controls and concealed sensitive aspects of their research.

Some safeguards appear to have worked but we don’t know the base rate. And what will happen with open-weight models and AIs not under the control of a large corporation? The safeguards also burden legitimate researchers. We should accept that AI will magnify the power of small groups, ill-intentioned or not.

Of course, AI can accelerate vaccines and treatments too. But faster science does not automatically mean faster defense. Turning discoveries into deployed vaccines and treatments requires institutions that can act quickly. We should not assume those institutions will keep pace with the technology.

That makes the recommendations in my 2025 paper, Pandemic Preparation Without Romance, more urgent (surprise!): wastewater surveillance; prediction markets; pre-developed vaccine libraries; human challenge trials planned in advance; a Pandemic Trust Fund; and temporary Operation Warp Speed–style public–private partnerships.

My paper argues that pandemic policy should not depend on unusually farsighted or wise politicians. Public tripwires and banked resources are what you build when you don’t trust the authorities to move quickly in a crisis hence the value of ideas like wastewater surveillance, vaccine libraries, and ready challenge-trial protocols. None of these technologies is highly expensive nor do they require much in the way of continued investment and attention, hence pandemic preparation without romance.

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