fLAWS: A Warning Against Lethal Autonomous Agents
In 2021, a small North Carolina-based drug company called Collaborations Pharmaceuticals was invited to present their thoughts about the potential for harm caused by their research at a biennial arms control conference. Collaborations Pharmaceuticals’ core intellectual property is its drug design software MegaSyn. MegaSyn incorporates machine learning (ML) techniques to identify and repurpose existing drugs to treat rare diseases, afflictions that carry little financial incentive for large drug manufacturers to cure. MegaSyn can also develop…