All of this seems solid, but it seems to me there are two additional considerations that push in the opposite direction:
COVID and its aftermath seem to suggest that pandemics make society dumber and more reactive. I wonder if a surge in bioterror would reduce humanity’s decision-making capability at a critical time?
Releasing highly capable open weights models would seem to increase existential risk by bringing near-SOTA capabilities to more actors. (For example, North Korea is probably incapable of building a frontier model from scratch, but might be able to perform large-scale fine-tuning to obtain a variety of problematic capabilities including but not limited to CBRN development).
Thank you for this—I think it does a great job of its objective.
Reading this reinforces my sense that while plenty of people have put forth some thoughtful and insightful disagreements with IABIED, there’s no comprehensive counter-argument that has anywhere near the level of polish and presentation as IABIED itself.