Thankfully, that complete failure seems to have been the end of either of their mad scientist careers, as they are now twenty and twenty-three, and both well-adjusted, peaceful members of the community.
Never let your age stop your curiosity.
But also learn from other's mistakes (and don't try to eat condensed milk when hanging head down)
A real nuclear engineer with the knowledge he needed would also have said "no, don't do that and I won't help you." We are programming the knowledge into the ai agent. Giving ai a little discretion makes sense too.
Fair enough, I misread your original comment.
The broader point stands that the limitation on creating nuclear weapons and reactors is not knowledge but materials. Even if he himself had a PhD in nuclear physics he still couldn't have built one in his backyard because he wouldn't be able to get the materials. A nuclear physicist can't build a reactor without materials anymore than a pilot can fly without an airplane.
If a nuclear engineer enabled and instructed him, would there not be liability for the hazard? If ml is going to be an expert instructor for nuclear, hacking, bio hacking, virus research, do the peddlers of the ai product escape ethical or legal responsibility just because "its an app?"
Should the library where he read books about physics also be liable?
There is an extremely narrow band of things that the AI shouldn't be answering, and that is generally immediately-actionable advice that allows someone to build something of harm to others. But even then, in an age where Tor, bittrent, i2p, abliterated local models, etc are freely available, let alone numerous books and online resources, is there even a point? Is it worth fully compromising the principles of free agency to an increasingly oppressed populace?
But instead of that we are handing the keys to regressive and repressive governments to order the suppression of any knowledge they deem inconvenient. I really doubt anyone is going to take a principled stance when the company's party minders threaten local staff with a rubber hose or incarceration.
I'm sure China et al are already doing this.
For the past 30-40 years humanity has received an incredible gift in these sand-powered thinking brainboxes. A gift that allows the common man to empower himself with a force multiplier towards his own success, and now access to superintelligence the likes of which few have ever seen. These can be tools to destroy the oppression that governs our lives from foolhardy, greedy, bootlicking control freaks. And here we are squandering it.
The concern here is not if an amateur attempt to make a reactor, hack a bank, bioengineer a medicine/poison is successful or not. Interactive and instructive access to some forms of knowledge used to come with discretion along side instruction.
Yes, perhaps your swearing at me in this context is a little hysterical
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...
It really isn't.
A pile of radioactive waste isn't a reactor. Marie Curie's notes are famously contaminated with radioactive materials but they aren't a reactor. This is about as close as the boy scout got.
The Oklo fossil reactor is unique because it happened to form in the right circumstances to produce a fission chain reaction, which does make it a reactor. Not every uranium mine is a reactor, in fact this is the only one known.