All you need to pull that off is public info, student level knowledge and access to a lab with standard equipment. As you said labs do things like that all the time. Its already easy even without powerful AI.
The reason we dont see any serious attempts to create a deadly pandemic is not that we keep insane people out of labs, because there is no way to find out if someone is a cultist or murderous psycho when they have every reason to actively hide it. Its because a) most people are not evil and b) a virus that can kill everyone it touches would probably kill its creator first.
As someone with basically zero bio experience I think I could get a working smallpox or ebola level virus in a year or two if I had time to learn, lab equipment and Annas Library. No LLMs needed. But I dont want to do that, and I think its the same for all the people who could do it right now.
The reason we dont see any serious attempts to create a deadly pandemic is not that we keep insane people out of labs, because there is no way to find out if someone is a cultist or murderous psycho when they have every reason to actively hide it. Its because a) most people are not evil and b) a virus that can kill everyone it touches would probably kill its creator first.
As someone with basically zero bio experience I think I could get a working smallpox or ebola level virus in a year or two if I had time to learn, lab equipment and Annas Library. No LLMs needed. But I dont want to do that, and I think its the same for all the people who could do it right now.