Description
Chemical and Biological Weapons (CBW) convergence with AI is front and centre of British media framing of AI risks. It has been reported that AI has the potential to help actors utilise CBW, develop and plan attacks, and to discover new toxins. British Prime Minster Sunak has repeated these fears, opening the UK AI safety summit on November 2nd, 2023, with warnings of AI’s potential in aiding CBW development. Therefore, how does the UK media report on CBW and AI convergence? Do the media overstate the threat of CBW in the context of AI, or downplayed AI impact on CBW? I argue that the UK is historically vulnerable to CBW anxieties, particularly after the 2018 Salisbury nerve agent attack. This paper employs discourse analysis to study how scientific research around CBW and AI was reported by media sources, between 2022 to 2023. I then relate this to deep, existential anxieties in the UK related to CBW, which could provide a sense of urgency for political action to be taken over AI. My expected findings are that the UK media focused in particular on CBW and AI, because of the UK’s historic relationship with CBW insecurities, with the Salisbury attacks being a key example of this.
