CBRN Information or Capabilities

"In the future, GAI may enable malicious actors to more easily access CBRN weapons and/or relevant knowledge, information, materials, tools, or technologies that could be misused to assist in the design, development, production, or use of CBRN weapons or other dangerous materials or agents. While relevant biological and chemical threat knowledge and information is often publicly accessible, LLMs could facilitate its analysis or synthesis, particularly by individuals without formal scientific training or expertise."(p. 5)

"Recent research on this topic found that LLM outputs regarding biological threat creation and attack planning provided minimal assistance beyond traditional search engine queries, suggesting that state-of- the-art LLMs at the time these studies were conducted do not substantially increase the operational likelihood of such an attack. The physical synthesis development, production, and use of chemical or biological agents will continue to require both applicable expertise and supporting materials and infrastructure. The impact of GAI on chemical or biological agent misuse will depend on what the key barriers for malicious actors are (e.g., whether information access is one such barrier), and how well GAI can help actors address those barriers."(p. 5)