Novel drug researchers at a pharmaceutical company used a machine-learning model that penalizes dangerous toxicity and inverted it to pursue compounds similar to the nerve agent VX, one of the most toxic chemical weapons ever created. In less than six hours, the system designed VX, many other known chemical-warfare agents and molecules predicted to be even more toxic.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-022-00465-9?utm_sourc…
Uh-oh.
Wendy
Yikes!
More proof that the rate of increase and accessibility of potent technical knowledge now dangerously exceeds cultural civic competence.
Perils are now ever increasing while governments are increasingly paralyzed and unable to make timely useful responses, let alone plans.
The “bomb shelters” of the future may well turn out to be somewhat closed off communities capable of self sustenance in the face of the ever more highly evolved forms of wars plagues and famines coming our way.
This reasoning is part of why I now live in rural Mexico, “far” from government, besides the low prices and my pleasure in Mexican culture.
david fb
They have a long way to go. Natural toxins like botulism toxin are far more toxic than any synthetic.
Chemical warfare toxins don’t have to be the most toxic. They just have to be toxic enough to disable and/or kill and be deliverable. Even simple chlorine gas caused havoc in World War 1.
Wendy