#171 – Alison Young on how top labs have jeopardised public health with repeated biosafety failures

#171 – Alison Young on how top labs have jeopardised public health with repeated biosafety failures

"Rare events can still cause catastrophic accidents. The concern that has been raised by experts going back over time, is that really, the more of these experiments, the more labs, the more opportunities there are for a rare event to occur — that the right pathogen is involved and infects somebody in one of these labs, or is released in some way from these labs. And what I chronicle in Pandora's Gamble is that there have been these previous outbreaks that have been associated with various kinds of lab accidents. So this is not a theoretical thing that can happen: it has happened in the past." — Alison Young

In today’s episode, host Luisa Rodriguez interviews award-winning investigative journalist Alison Young on the surprising frequency of lab leaks and what needs to be done to prevent them in the future.

Links to learn more, summary, and full transcript.

They cover:

  • The most egregious biosafety mistakes made by the CDC, and how Alison uncovered them through her investigative reporting
  • The Dugway life science test facility case, where live anthrax was accidentally sent to labs across the US and several other countries over a period of many years
  • The time the Soviets had a major anthrax leak, and then hid it for over a decade
  • The 1977 influenza pandemic caused by vaccine trial gone wrong in China
  • The last death from smallpox, caused not by the virus spreading in the wild, but by a lab leak in the UK
  • Ways we could get more reliable oversight and accountability for these labs
  • And the investigative work Alison’s most proud of

Chapters:

  • Cold open (00:00:00)
  • Luisa's intro (00:01:13)
  • Investigating leaks at the CDC (00:05:16)
  • High-profile CDC accidents (00:16:13)
  • Dugway live anthrax accidents (00:32:08)
  • Soviet anthrax leak (00:44:41)
  • The 1977 influenza pandemic (00:53:43)
  • The last death from smallpox (00:59:27)
  • How common are lab leaks? (01:09:05)
  • Improving the regulation of dangerous biological research (01:18:36)
  • Potential solutions (01:34:55)
  • The investigative work Alison’s most proud of (01:40:33)

Producer and editor: Keiran Harris
Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
Technical editing: Simon Monsour and Milo McGuire
Additional content editing: Katy Moore and Luisa Rodriguez
Transcriptions: Katy Moore

Jaksot(318)

#226 – Holden Karnofsky on unexploited opportunities to make AI safer — and all his AGI takes

#226 – Holden Karnofsky on unexploited opportunities to make AI safer — and all his AGI takes

For years, working on AI safety usually meant theorising about the ‘alignment problem’ or trying to convince other people to give a damn. If you could find any way to help, the work was frustrating an...

30 Loka 20254h 30min

#225 – Daniel Kokotajlo on what a hyperspeed robot economy might look like

#225 – Daniel Kokotajlo on what a hyperspeed robot economy might look like

When Daniel Kokotajlo talks to security experts at major AI labs, they tell him something chilling: “Of course we’re probably penetrated by the CCP already, and if they really wanted something, they c...

27 Loka 20252h 12min

#224 – There's a cheap and low-tech way to save humanity from any engineered disease | Andrew Snyder-Beattie

#224 – There's a cheap and low-tech way to save humanity from any engineered disease | Andrew Snyder-Beattie

Conventional wisdom is that safeguarding humanity from the worst biological risks — microbes optimised to kill as many as possible — is difficult bordering on impossible, making bioweapons humanity’s ...

2 Loka 20252h 31min

Inside the Biden admin’s AI policy approach | Jake Sullivan, Biden’s NSA | via The Cognitive Revolution

Inside the Biden admin’s AI policy approach | Jake Sullivan, Biden’s NSA | via The Cognitive Revolution

Jake Sullivan was the US National Security Advisor from 2021-2025. He joined our friends on The Cognitive Revolution podcast in August to discuss AI as a critical national security issue. We thought i...

26 Syys 20251h 5min

#223 – Neel Nanda on leading a Google DeepMind team at 26 – and advice if you want to work at an AI company (part 2)

#223 – Neel Nanda on leading a Google DeepMind team at 26 – and advice if you want to work at an AI company (part 2)

At 26, Neel Nanda leads an AI safety team at Google DeepMind, has published dozens of influential papers, and mentored 50 junior researchers — seven of whom now work at major AI companies. His secret?...

15 Syys 20251h 46min

#222 – Can we tell if an AI is loyal by reading its mind? DeepMind's Neel Nanda (part 1)

#222 – Can we tell if an AI is loyal by reading its mind? DeepMind's Neel Nanda (part 1)

We don’t know how AIs think or why they do what they do. Or at least, we don’t know much. That fact is only becoming more troubling as AIs grow more capable and appear on track to wield enormous cultu...

8 Syys 20253h 1min

#221 – Kyle Fish on the most bizarre findings from 5 AI welfare experiments

#221 – Kyle Fish on the most bizarre findings from 5 AI welfare experiments

What happens when you lock two AI systems in a room together and tell them they can discuss anything they want?According to experiments run by Kyle Fish — Anthropic’s first AI welfare researcher — som...

28 Elo 20252h 28min

How not to lose your job to AI (article by Benjamin Todd)

How not to lose your job to AI (article by Benjamin Todd)

About half of people are worried they’ll lose their job to AI. They’re right to be concerned: AI can now complete real-world coding tasks on GitHub, generate photorealistic video, drive a taxi more sa...

31 Heinä 202551min

Suosittua kategoriassa Koulutus

rss-murhan-anatomia
psykopodiaa-podcast
voi-hyvin-meditaatiot-2
rss-niinku-asia-on
kesken
rss-liian-kuuma-peruna
rss-narsisti
adhd-podi
ihminen-tavattavissa-tommy-hellsten-instituutti
rss-duodecim-lehti
rss-psykalab
aamukahvilla
aloita-meditaatio
psykologia
rahapuhetta
rss-elamankoulu
rss-valo-minussa-2
rss-arkijarki
rss-honest-talk-with-laurrenna
rss-mental-race