But to your point, I 100% agree. Even if Covid was zoonotic, it absolutely could have been a human fuckup. The amount of lab leaks over the years, including things like Anthrax, Polio, SARS and even Covid (yes, in Taiwan after the initial outbreak) from BSL3 and 4, are just waaay to common.
After a plane crash, there are almost always changes to protocol, equipment or even the aircraft. Here, we had millions of casualties globally, and this risk is as real now as yesterday. I get that we have pandemic fatigue, and nobody wants to think about it. But if keep playing with fire, it will happen again, sooner or later.
What are you talking about? The Wuhan Institute of Virology is firmly located on sovereign Chinese territory. In fact, the main reason why any serious scientist should still give the lab leak theory the time of day is due to the fact that China was so cagey with what was going on at the WIV. If this lab was multi-governmental we would have the data China withheld and the lab leak theory wouldn't have any shadow to lie in.
Furthermore, the real problem with the lab leak theory is that it does not matter whether or not it is true. If COVID-19 originated from animal sources, then we should regulate wet markets, crack down on the endangered animal trade, and stop doing gain-of-function research. If COVID-19 originated from a lab, then we should stop doing gain-of-function research, regulate wet markets, and crack down on the endangered animal trade. All of those things are very prudent things to do if you want to slow down the introduction of novel pathogens.
Here is a review paper of all the evidence so far:
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur...
https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2025/03/28/covid-1...
Additionally the Biden administration and other world governments suppressed the lab leak hypothesis which means that researchers seeking government funding had an incentive to support the official wet market narrative instead…
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/5058339-biden-adminis...
The review paper I mentioned shows dozens of papers showing evidence of market as initial spread.
According to the CCP, whose version of the events cannot be trusted. The reality is that they had the time, means, and motivation to destroy any samples and records related to COVID.
Also speaking of patterns, the WIV has a history of safety lapses and was known to be working with SARS family viruses in BSL-2 labs, which are wholly inadequate.
Animals infected with the Thai virus were imported from Thailand to the Wuhan wet market. People on the north side of the river within 100 meters of the wet market got sick. People on the south side of the river within 15km of the WIV did not get sick. We are not relying on the CCP for the information that people on the south side of the river did not get sick. There were foreign citizens living south of the river and we got our information from them.
OK, if you said an AI made specifically for generating virus genes i might think maybe..
I find it very hard to believe the chatbots can.
There are so many things go wrong for even the most basic things it's amazing how anyone gets microbiology done in the first place
a) Doing well on multiple-choice tests does not really imply anything about doing well in a real lab setting, especially for an AI.
b) Using multiple-choice tests to compare LLMs to humans has an obvious flaw: LLMs are probably superhuman at guessing multiple-choice answers based on superficial statistics! We all learned as children that there are ways to game multiple-choice questions even if you have no idea what the answer is.
c) It is just unacceptably lazy for AI researchers to do this. They aren't teachers on a tight deadline. There is no justification whatsoever for AI researchers to use Scantrons.
I am truly disgusted with the poor scientific rigor in AI research. So depressing.
Workaccount2•9mo ago
Ironically this study comes from two safety oriented organizations, so I question their reasoning for running to make it public that you can use SOTA models right now to do the knowledge legwork for creating deadly bioweapons.
throwawaymaths•9mo ago
gus_massa•9mo ago
fake quote> You are overcooking the virus, remember to keep the temperature below 37°C (100°F)
As far as I read, the AIs don't propose new virus variants.
Workaccount2•9mo ago