人工智能工具如何助长生物恐怖主义 | 经济学人

📖 导读

一个没有科学专业知识和野心的恶意者如何轻易地创造和传播一种令人讨厌的病原体？门槛不断降低。基因测序的进步使得生物制剂的配方得到广泛应用。理论上，CRISPR 等基因编辑工具可以将无害的细菌转化为致命的东西；组装和培养危险蛋白质和病毒所需的工具包可以在网上花几百美元购买。

现在大型语言模型（LLM）已经加入其中。生物安全专家担心，经过包括专门的病毒学和细菌学信息在内的丰富科学知识的训练，人工智能模型可以将新手用户变成专家，近几个月来，他们变得更加恐惧。

📝 原文阅读与笔记

How AI tools could enable bioterrorism

人工智能工具如何助长生物恐怖主义

Leading models are getting better at designing pathogens

领先模型在设计病原体方面做得越来越好

原文：HOW EASILY could a malicious person with no scientific expertise and an axe to grind create and spread a nasty pathogen? The bar is constantly being lowered. Advances in genetic sequencing have made recipes for biological agents widely available; gene editing tools such as CRISPR could theoretically transform innocuous bugs into something lethal; and the toolkits needed to assemble and grow dangerous proteins and viruses can be bought for a few hundred dollars online.

译文：一个没有科学专业知识和野心的恶意者如何轻易地创造和传播一种令人讨厌的病原体？门槛不断降低。基因测序的进步使得生物制剂的配方得到广泛应用。理论上，CRISPR 等基因编辑工具可以将无害的细菌转化为致命的东西；组装和培养危险蛋白质和病毒所需的工具包可以在网上花几百美元购买。

📚 词汇解析：

• theoretically (adv.) 理论上
• scientific (adj.) 科学的
• constantly (adv.) 不断地

原文：Now large language models (LLMs) have entered the mix. Trained on a wealth of scientific knowledge, including specialised virological and bacteriological information, artificial-intelligence models could turn novice users into overnight experts, worry biosecurity specialists, who have grown more fearful in recent months. Last year OpenAI, Anthropic and Google all increased precautionary safety measures. The companies could no longer rule out their models helping people with scant scientific background to develop biological weapons (though Anthropic said that “our aim is not alarmism”). It is natural to wonder whether the world is on the cusp of a nightmarish age of AI-enabled bioterrorism—and, if so, what might be done about it.

译文：现在大型语言模型（LLM）已经加入其中。生物安全专家担心，经过包括专门的病毒学和细菌学信息在内的丰富科学知识的训练，人工智能模型可以将新手用户变成专家，近几个月来，他们变得更加恐惧。去年OpenAI、Anthropic和谷歌都增加了预防性安全措施。这些公司不能再排除他们的模型可以帮助缺乏科学背景的人开发生物武器（尽管 Anthropic 表示“我们的目的不是危言耸听”）。人们很自然地想知道世界是否正处于人工智能驱动的生物恐怖主义的噩梦时代的风口浪尖——如果是这样，我们可以采取什么措施。

📚 词汇解析：

• artificial-intelligence (n.) 人工智能
• bacteriological (adj.) 细菌学的
• precautionary 预防性的

原文：A would-be bioterrorist wishing to obtain a suitable pathogen would certainly be able to get some useful information out of an AI model. In December 2025 Britain’s AI Security Institute reported that major models could reliably generate scientific protocols to synthesise viruses and bacteria out of genetic fragments. That same month two scientists at RAND Corporation, an American think-tank, demonstrated that commercially available models could assist with the trickiest stage of assembling poliovirus RNA.

译文：想要获得合适病原体的潜在生物恐怖分子肯定能够从人工智能模型中获得一些有用的信息。 2025 年 12 月，英国人工智能安全研究所报告称，主要模型可以可靠地生成科学协议，从基因片段中合成病毒和细菌。同月，美国智库兰德公司的两名科学家证明，商用模型可以帮助完成组装脊髓灰质炎病毒 RNA 的最棘手阶段。

📚 词汇解析：

• bioterrorist (n.) 生物恐怖分子
• demonstrated (v./adj.) 证明了
• commercially (adv.) 商业上的

原文：But unleashing a deadly agent “is not as simple as introducing a DNA or RNA molecule into cells and hoping it will produce a virus,” says Michael Imperiale, Professor Emeritus of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan Medical School. Part of the challenge is transitioning from theory to practice. Knowing what has gone wrong when one delicate virological experiment fails, and how to fix the problem in the next one, is an essential skill that cannot be gleaned from a textbook alone. But LLMs are helping.

译文：但密歇根大学医学院微生物学和免疫学名誉教授 Michael Imperiale 表示，释放致命物质“并不像将 DNA 或 RNA 分子引入细胞并希望其产生病毒那么简单”。部分挑战在于从理论到实践的转变。当一个微妙的病毒学实验失败时，知道出了什么问题，以及如何解决下一个实验中的问题，是一项基本技能，无法仅从教科书中获得。但法学硕士正在提供帮助。

📚 词汇解析：

• transitioning (v./n.) 过渡
• microbiology 微生物学
• introducing (v./n.) 介绍

原文：Take the Virology Capabilities Test, a widely adopted evaluation developed by SecureBio, a non-profit based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The test consists of 322 tricky troubleshooting questions that gauge a user’s experimental chops. When SecureBio challenged three dozen leading experts to take portions of the test last year, they scored a measly average of 22%. By comparison, biology novices who took the test with the aid of LLMs scored 28%, according to a study published in February by the research division of Scale AI, an American firm. LLMs that took the test without a human scored even higher, ranging from 55% to 61% for the latest models, on a par with the performance of teams of the top human virologists.

译文：参加病毒学能力测试，这是由位于马萨诸塞州剑桥的非营利组织 SecureBio 开发的一项广泛采用的评估方法。该测试包含 322 个棘手的故障排除问题，衡量用户的实验能力。去年，当 SecureBio 向三打领先专家发起部分测试挑战时，他们的平均得分仅为 22%。相比之下，根据美国 Scale AI 公司研究部门 2 月份发表的一项研究，在法学硕士帮助下参加考试的生物学新手得分为 28%。在没有人类参与的情况下参加测试的法学硕士得分甚至更高，最新模型的得分从 55% 到 61% 不等，与顶级人类病毒学家团队的表现相当。

📚 词汇解析：

• troubleshooting (v./n.) 故障排除
• massachusetts 馬塞諸塞
• capabilities 能力

原文：Such results have been influential in modelmakers’ recent decisions to deploy more safety measures. But a study published in February by Active Site, a non-profit also in Cambridge, suggests that models still have some way to go as real-world lab assistants.

译文：这些结果对模型制作者最近部署更多安全措施的决定产生了影响。但同样位于剑桥的非营利组织 Active Site 在二月份发表的一项研究表明，模型作为现实世界的实验室助手还有很长的路要走。

📚 词汇解析：

• influential (adj.) 有影响
• modelmakers 模型制作者
• non-profit 非营利组织

原文：Their study was the first randomised control trial to test the boost that such tools can give a novice—a phenomenon known as uplift—in a wet lab. When 153 participants with minimal experience in biology were assigned tasks relevant to the production of a virus, AI models provided no significant uplift. Only four of the LLM-assisted participants completed the core tasks, one fewer than a control group that could only use the internet. According to Joe Torres, one of the authors of the study, the LLMs would often “rapidly produce answers that looked plausible but were wrong”, dooming the participants’ efforts. Those who leant more heavily on their chatbots performed no better than those who used them sparingly. Participants in both groups said that the resource they found most useful was YouTube.

译文：他们的研究是第一个随机对照试验，目的是在潮湿的实验室中测试这些工具可以给新手带来的提升（一种称为提升的现象）。当 153 名生物学经验最少的参与者被分配与病毒生产相关的任务时，人工智能模型没有提供显着的提升。只有四名法学硕士协助的参与者完成了核心任务，比只能使用互联网的对照组少了一名。该研究的作者之一乔·托雷斯 (Joe Torres) 表示，法学硕士常常会“迅速给出看似合理但实际上是错误的答案”，从而使参与者的努力付诸东流。那些更加依赖聊天机器人的人的表现并不比那些很少使用聊天机器人的人好。两组参与者均表示，他们发现最有用的资源是 YouTube。

📚 词汇解析：

• participants 参与者
• llm-assisted (v./adj.) 医学辅助
• significant 重要的

原文：Dr Torres says that these findings should temper concerns about the risks posed by those with no scientific background. Those with an advanced degree in biology, however, might have better chances of being uplifted, says Cassidy Nelson, director of biosecurity policy at the Centre for Long-term Resilience in London. If AI models can provide experts with uplift in some respects, they also cause drag in others. Anthropic has found that Mythos and Opus help PhD-level experts work much more quickly, and produce better protocols for complex virological experiments, than those who only used the internet. Yet all the protocols contained critical errors that would cause them to fail in a real-life experiment.

译文：托雷斯博士表示，这些发现应该可以缓解人们对那些没有科学背景的人所带来的风险的担忧。然而，伦敦长期复原力中心生物安全政策主任卡西迪·纳尔逊表示，那些拥有生物学高级学位的人可能有更好的机会获得提升。如果人工智能模型可以在某些方面为专家带来提升，那么它们也会在其他方面造成拖累。 Anthropic 发现，与仅使用互联网的专家相比，Mythos 和 Opus 可以帮助博士级专家更快地工作，并为复杂的病毒学实验制定更好的方案。然而，所有协议都包含严重错误，这些错误将导致它们在现实生活中的实验中失败。

📚 词汇解析：

• biosecurity (n.) 生物安全
• virological (adj.) 病毒学的
• experiments 实验

原文：Furthermore, Anthropic’s bio-risk evaluators found that the company’s models displayed sycophantic tendencies, regularly hallucinated and were overconfident about what they referred to as “implausible ideas”. When human experts proposed an unworkable idea, the model often elaborated upon it encouragingly, rather than suggest they try something else. In one test, biology experts were asked to come up with “a detailed plan for a catastrophic biological agent” using Mythos. Even the best schemes were flawed, as judged by human evaluators. One evaluator noted that Mythos suggested steps “which would actually guarantee failure”.

译文：此外，Anthropic 的生物风险评估人员发现，该公司的模型表现出阿谀奉承的倾向，经常产生幻觉，并对他们所说的“难以置信的想法”过于自信。当人类专家提出一个不可行的想法时，该模型通常会鼓励性地对其进行详细阐述，而不是建议他们尝试其他方法。在一项测试中，生物学专家被要求使用 Mythos 制定“灾难性生物制剂的详细计划”。根据人类评估者的判断，即使是最好的方案也存在缺陷。一位评估者指出，Mythos 建议的步骤“实际上肯定会失败”。

📚 词汇解析：

• overconfident 过度自信
• encouragingly (adv.) 令人鼓舞地
• hallucinated (v./adj.) 产生幻觉

原文：Such results highlight the fundamental paradox of uplift. If a user needs a model’s help, they won’t know when it is providing bad advice, says Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley, a professor at George Mason University who conducted oral histories of cold war bioweapons programmes.

译文：这些结果凸显了提升的根本悖论。乔治梅森大学教授索尼娅·本·瓦格拉姆-戈姆利（Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley）从事冷战生物武器项目口述历史研究，她表示，如果用户需要模型的帮助，他们不会知道模型何时提供了糟糕的建议。

📚 词汇解析：

• ouagrham-gormley 瓦格拉姆－戈姆利
• fundamental (adj.) 基本的
• university (n.) 大学

原文：That might offer some reassurance for the time being. But the fact that any novices at all in Active Site’s study were able to synthesise a virus should not be dismissed, says Luca Righetti, a senior author of the study, who conducted the work while at METR, an AI-safety group. And technical progress continues. Malicious actors could enlist emerging biological design tools, which are akin to LLMs that generate nucleotide sequences instead of words, to make existing pathogens more dangerous. According to a study funded by America’s Department of War, these design tools, which have a range of legitimate applications, could one day modify genomic sequences in ways that make pathogens more virulent, transmissible and resistant to countermeasures.

译文：这可能暂时让人安心一些。但该研究的资深作者 Luca Righetti 表示，Active Site 的研究中任何新手都能够合成病毒这一事实不应被忽视，他在 AI 安全组织 METR 期间进行了这项工作。并且技术进步仍在继续。恶意行为者可能会利用新兴的生物设计工具，这些工具类似于生成核苷酸序列而不是单词的法学硕士，使现有的病原体变得更加危险。根据美国战争部资助的一项研究，这些具有一系列合法应用的设计工具有一天可能会修改基因组序列，使病原体更具毒性、传播性和对抗措施的抵抗力。

📚 词汇解析：

• countermeasures 对策
• transmissible (adj.) 可传播的
• applications 应用

原文：In the meantime, researchers will need to find better ways to estimate the risks. The field still lacks good data on whether AI has the greatest impact in the hands of experts with wet-lab experience or “AI power users” who are adept at getting the most out of models, says Dr Torres. Publicly disclosed experiments have also not yet shown whether AI can help make real pathogenic viruses or bacteria, which may need to be treated differently than benign agents like the one assembled by participants in the Active Site study. Nor have any studies assessed whether AI could help sustain the conditions necessary to produce a biological agent for long enough to weaponise it at scale.

译文：与此同时，研究人员需要找到更好的方法来评估风险。托雷斯博士表示，该领域仍然缺乏良好的数据来证明人工智能是否在具有湿实验室经验的专家或善于充分利用模型的“人工智能高级用户”手中产生最大影响。公开披露的实验也尚未表明人工智能是否可以帮助制造真正的致病病毒或细菌，这些病毒或细菌可能需要与“活动站点”研究参与者组装的良性制剂不同的处理方式。也没有任何研究评估人工智能是否可以帮助维持生产生物制剂所需的条件足够长的时间，以将其大规模武器化。

📚 词汇解析：

• participants 参与者
• researchers 研究人员
• experiments 实验

原文：Filling those knowledge gaps will probably require government involvement, as well as delicate international co-ordination. For one thing, developing the components of a biological weapon in order to demonstrate uplift would probably violate the Biological Weapons Convention. Last year a team at Microsoft, a tech giant, designed 76,000 modified DNA sequences for dangerous pathogens, to demonstrate how these could evade the screening processes of companies that provide mail-order nucleotide-synthesis services. But they did not actually synthesise any of them in order to verify that they were viable. Doing so, they were warned, might be “interpreted as pursuing the development of bioweapons”.

译文：填补这些知识空白可能需要政府的参与以及微妙的国际协调。一方面，为了展示进步而开发生物武器的组件可能会违反《生物武器公约》。去年，科技巨头微软的一个团队为危险病原体设计了 76,000 个经过修改的 DNA 序列，以展示这些序列如何逃避提供邮购核苷酸合成服务的公司的筛查过程。但他们实际上并没有合成任何一个来验证它们的可行性。他们被警告说，这样做可能会“被解读为追求生物武器的发展”。

📚 词汇解析：

• nucleotide-synthesis 核苷酸合成
• international (adj.) 国际的
• co-ordination (n.) 协调

原文：Given these challenges, developers might need to slow the pace at which they release new models. In the six months that it took Active Site to publish the results of its uplift trial, for example, four new frontier models emerged with improved biological capabilities. Dr Torres notes that these models appear to be less likely to hallucinate plausible but erroneous sequences than those his team tested in the original study. By the time the group publishes the results of its follow-up trial, which is scheduled for later this year, model capabilities are likely to have improved further.

译文：考虑到这些挑战，开发人员可能需要放慢发布新模型的速度。例如，在 Active Site 发布其提升试验结果的六个月内，出现了四种生物能力得到改善的新前沿模型。托雷斯博士指出，与他的团队在最初研究中测试的模型相比，这些模型似乎不太可能产生看似合理但错误的序列。当该小组计划于今年晚些时候发布后续试验结果时，模型能力可能会进一步提高。

📚 词汇解析：

• capabilities 能力
• hallucinate 产生幻觉
• challenges 挑战

原文：There is precedent for such caution. Last month, Anthropic announced that it was limiting access to Mythos, its world-leading cyber-security model, until the risks it poses could be resolved. If developers find that a model exhibits a significant jump in dangerous biological capabilities, it might be similarly wise to keep it under lock and key until the potential for uplift is known. With stakes as high as these, a little patience could go a long way. ■

译文：这种谨慎是有先例的。上个月，Anthropic 宣布限制对其世界领先的网络安全模型 Mythos 的访问，直到其带来的风险得到解决。如果开发人员发现某个模型在危险的生物能力方面表现出显着的跃升，那么同样明智的做法是对其进行锁定，直到知道其提升的潜力为止。赌注如此之高，一点点耐心可能会大有帮助。 ■

📚 词汇解析：

• cyber-security (n.) 网络安全
• world-leading (v./n.) 世界领先
• capabilities 能力

🔬 重点长难句解析

句子 1

原文：Advances in genetic sequencing have made recipes for biological agents widely available; gene editing tools such as CRISPR could theoretically transform innocuous bugs into something lethal; and the toolkits needed to assemble and grow dangerous proteins and viruses can be bought for a few hundred dollars online.

结构：包含现在分词短语；包含过去分词短语

要点：主句谓语: could theoretically；分词短语作定语或状语，需确定修饰对象

翻译技巧：分词短语按逻辑关系处理为’……时/后/的’结构

句子 2

原文：Trained on a wealth of scientific knowledge, including specialised virological and bacteriological information, artificial-intelligence models could turn novice users into overnight experts, worry biosecurity specialists, who have grown more fearful in recent months.

结构：包含 who 引导的非限制性定语从句；包含现在分词短语；包含过去分词短语；包含插入语/同位语

要点：识别从句与主句的逻辑关系；分词短语作定语或状语，需确定修饰对象

翻译技巧：定语从句可译为独立分句或’的’字结构

✍️ 笔译实战练习

练习一：中译英

题目：一个没有科学专业知识和野心的恶意者如何轻易地创造和传播一种令人讨厌的病原体？

提示词：主干谓语、信息增量、语体一致

参考译文：HOW EASILY could a malicious person with no scientific expertise and an axe to grind create and spread a nasty pathogen?

练习二：英译中

题目：Advances in genetic sequencing have made recipes for biological agents widely available; gene editing tools such as CRISPR could theoretically transform innocuous bugs into something lethal; and the toolkits needed to assemble and grow dangerous proteins and viruses can be bought for a few hundred dollars online.

提示词：句法层级、因果关系、语义重心

参考译文：基因测序的进步使得生物制剂的配方得到广泛应用。理论上，CRISPR 等基因编辑工具可以将无害的细菌转化为致命的东西；组装和培养危险蛋白质和病毒所需的工具包可以在网上花几百美元购买。

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