OpenAI says o1-preview can't meaningfully help novices make chemical and biological weapons. Their test results don’t clearly establish this.

Before launching o1-preview last month, OpenAI conducted various tests to see if its new model could help make Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) weapons. They report that o1-preview (unlike GPT-4o and older models) was significantly more useful than Google for helping trained experts plan out a CBRN attack. This caused the company to raise its CBRN risk level to “medium” when GPT-4o (released only a month earlier) had been at “low.”[1]

Of course, this doesn't tell us if o1-preview can also help a novice create a CBRN threat. A layperson would need more help than an expert — most importantly, they'd probably need some coaching and troubleshooting to help them do hands-on work in a wet lab. (See my previous blog post for more.)