[extropy-chat] Recipe for Destruction - Joy/Kurzweil NYTimes Op-Ed

[Brian Atkins]

The situation is very comparable to software antivirus.

In an ideal world, Kurzweil wants sophisticated defensive 
anti-biowarfare/bioterror tech, and little to no government interference. The 
problem is, we aren't there yet with the technology.

Hence the two pronged "figure out best way to slow the info getting into the 
wrong hands, while at the same time developing better defensive tech".

Isn't this essentially the same as what goes on in software vulnerabilities 
today? Aside from "black hat" research, all other software security researchers 
generally keep their research unpublished until the vulnerabilities have been 
figured out and patched.

The problem is that as Kurzweil notes, the bio researchers are not sticking to 
this procedure. Instead they are publishing proven "exploits" as soon as they 
find them. Hence the call to revise procedures among other things.

Now whether the government is forced to barge in will in part be based on 
whether these researchers can develop significantly better disclosure protocols 
voluntarily. If they deign not to, then you can't blame the rest of us for 
forcing them to eventually.
-- 
Brian Atkins
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/