The AI isn’t the technology making it easier, though - industrial production and market economics are. Sigma Aldrich is a much bigger danger to civilization than ChatGPT is (or possibly will ever be).
I think that’s only true if you think easy access to the correct information isn’t a hurdle. That same argument would claim the internet didn’t make it easier either because we already had libraries.
It really isn’t. For an undergraduate biologist, designing a mass casualty event is almost trivial. This has been the case for many decades. Hell, someone even moderately versed in something as stupid as homeopathic medicine could do it. Simplest example: homeopaths use DMSO because it absorbs through the skin so anything lethal (like arsenic compounds) that can be dissolved in a nonpolar solvent like DMSO can be used to kill people at tiny dosages using just skin contact. With low LD50s there are many compounds that could be sprayed by GA planes over urban areas that kill most people that come in contact with them.
There is an almost universal truth here: anyone capable of acquiring the resources for an attack is just as capable of acquiring the knowledge to do so with existing (pre-AI) sources.
Obviously there are some exceptions. But not as appreciable as you'd think.
Like, someone could have loaded a cannon with grapeshot and blasted a crowd of people in the 1700's. (Or loaded up a wagon with several barrels of black powder and grape shot.) Or chained the door shut to the local church and set fire to the building by tipping over an oil lamp. Or set fire to a few fields of crops or grain stores after harvest before winter and essentially starved a whole town.
I don't think it's all that appreciably easier to kill a similar number of people today. If anything, similar attacks today might actually be quite a bit HARDER to execute due to technology, and society is both more fragile as a whole but more resilient at small scales than it was. Population density might make a bigger difference than anything as targets with a large number of people are perhaps more available.
For your stance to be correct, it implies we reached peak technological lethality hundreds of years ago. That ignores advancements in nuclear technology, drone technology, biological technology, ballistic technology etc.
People could absolutely kill in prior eras. One of the biggest mass school killings was from the 1800s. That does not mean it isn’t easier in a modern era with more options and more lethal options. To the original point, the biggest mitigation is that people tend to be pro-social, not that technology is inherently benign.
Ok, I see what you mean now. Yes, I would agree that militarily it is easier with technological development. I just think for lone actors, there hasn't been a huge change.
Would you agree that technological progress tends to make it easier (and often to a large degree)