Ask A Genius 1382: AI, CRISPR, and Catastrophe
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/05/15
Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner reflect on AI as a global threat, following the Pope’s warning and the FDA’s internal AI rollout. Comparing AI to CRISPR, they discuss the lower barrier for malicious AI deployment, lack of global safeguards, and the grim likelihood of humanity firefighting digital chaos for decades.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What’s in AI news? On the 14th, a top panel identified artificial intelligence as one of the most critical issues facing humanity—during a formal address. They emphasized the importance of addressing the challenges of AI—particularly around human dignity, justice, and labor. That was the Pope.
The U.S. FDA also announced plans to deploy AI internally across its various centers after a successful experimental run. They’re aiming for enhanced agency efficiency and decision-making.
Rosner: Which department?
Jacobsen: FDA. Food and Drug Administration. Thoughts on the FDA? Thoughts on the Pope?
Rosner: The Pope’s not wrong. Whether anything can actually be done, though—that’s the real question. Are we already too late?
Jacobsen: Or maybe… has it always been too late?
Rosner: Yeah. I mean, we’ve been lucky so far with CRISPR. A bunch of lunatics haven’t yet decided to fuck around with it—like making custom viruses. That’s going to change. There’s going to be some weird, unpredictable stuff coming. We just don’t know what yet.
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So CRISPR is complicated enough that the average lunatic can’t whip up a bioweapon in their garage. You can’t just dabble in gene editing the way you can in, say, driving a truck through a crowd. The effort-to-damage ratio is much lower in simpler forms of chaos.
Jacobsen: But with AI, the bar to malicious deployment is probably lower. CRISPR is still fairly elite, technical, and hard to scale. With AI, the economic incentives are clearer. Companies see immediate use cases. There’s more money-making potential, more adoption pressure, and fewer clear boundaries. It may not be easy to train a high-end model, but it’s much easier to deploy AI at scale than it is to deploy CRISPR tools. So the path to disaster is wider with AI.
There are fewer roadblocks for AI. And it’s hard to imagine any kind of meaningful containment structure that could be developed fast enough. No global regulation will move fast enough.
Rosner: So instead of building a solid containment system, we’re just going to be putting out fires—or failing to—for the next few decades. Probably longer.
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