Scientists Make First Viruses Designed By AI 81
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists have made the first viruses designed by artificial intelligence in a milestone that raises hopes for new medicines but also concerns over how to ensure the technology remains safe. The viruses are specific kinds known as bacteriophages, which only infect bacteria and are used around the world to treat patients with persistent infections. In lab tests, a cocktail of the AI-designed viruses killed E coli bugs that were resistant to natural bacteriophages.
Dr Brian Hie, a chemical engineer at Stanford University in California, used genome language models, the genetic equivalent of the large language models behind AI chatbots, to design functioning genomes for bacteriophages. The viruses were then made in the laboratory and pitted against E coli in a dish. The ability to "rapidly design" genomes and tune them for specific bugs while overcoming resistance could "transform phage therapy" and "expand biotechnological toolkits," the researchers wrote in the journal Science.
But beyond the potential benefits, the scientists said the work raised "important biosafety, biocontainment and biosecurity considerations" and urged others who were designing whole genomes to "consult both safety and security professionals throughout the project." In an accompanying article, Prof Tom Inglesby and Dr Moritz Hanke at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, reinforced the warning, writing: "Although this is promising for life sciences applications, it also raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions. The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not." Tom Ellis, a professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London, said the work was impressive, but revealed how hard it would be to make more complex genomes. "This is literally the smallest and easiest genome to make," he said. An AI trained on the genetic code of dangerous bugs could be used to design more harmful viruses, Ellis said, but controlling access to genetic data and having restrictions on making genomes that look dangerous would help. "Governments are working hard to do this already," he added. "But honestly," he said, "the threat from full AI design and writing of a genome of a virus or bacteria is very overblown when we consider that just taking existing pathogens and making gain-of-function changes to their genomes is so much easier and much more likely to be a real pathogenic threat."
Dr Filippa Lentzos, a reader in science and international security at King's College London, said the most important point to intervene at the moment was when DNA was being manufactured. "It's important to see the bigger governance picture and not focus regulation solely on the AI model," she said. "A layered approach makes more sense: safeguards around model development and access, responsible research review, synthesis screening, and established laboratory biosafety and biosecurity."
Dr Brian Hie, a chemical engineer at Stanford University in California, used genome language models, the genetic equivalent of the large language models behind AI chatbots, to design functioning genomes for bacteriophages. The viruses were then made in the laboratory and pitted against E coli in a dish. The ability to "rapidly design" genomes and tune them for specific bugs while overcoming resistance could "transform phage therapy" and "expand biotechnological toolkits," the researchers wrote in the journal Science.
But beyond the potential benefits, the scientists said the work raised "important biosafety, biocontainment and biosecurity considerations" and urged others who were designing whole genomes to "consult both safety and security professionals throughout the project." In an accompanying article, Prof Tom Inglesby and Dr Moritz Hanke at the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, reinforced the warning, writing: "Although this is promising for life sciences applications, it also raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions. The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not." Tom Ellis, a professor of synthetic genome engineering at Imperial College London, said the work was impressive, but revealed how hard it would be to make more complex genomes. "This is literally the smallest and easiest genome to make," he said. An AI trained on the genetic code of dangerous bugs could be used to design more harmful viruses, Ellis said, but controlling access to genetic data and having restrictions on making genomes that look dangerous would help. "Governments are working hard to do this already," he added. "But honestly," he said, "the threat from full AI design and writing of a genome of a virus or bacteria is very overblown when we consider that just taking existing pathogens and making gain-of-function changes to their genomes is so much easier and much more likely to be a real pathogenic threat."
Dr Filippa Lentzos, a reader in science and international security at King's College London, said the most important point to intervene at the moment was when DNA was being manufactured. "It's important to see the bigger governance picture and not focus regulation solely on the AI model," she said. "A layered approach makes more sense: safeguards around model development and access, responsible research review, synthesis screening, and established laboratory biosafety and biosecurity."
oops (Score:5, Insightful)
we're going to accidentally Andromeda Strain ourselves.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: oops (Score:3)
I just hope we make it until I'm dead, humans are just about done. I'm glad I got to live through the 80-90s.
Eric Schmidt on why biotech harms likely from AI (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"(45:21) Interviewer: But theoretically, couldn't AI and biotechnology help you come up with a counter measure?
Schmidt: Um, I had thought so, and that was the argument I made until I... I do a lot of national security work. And there's a term called offense dominant. And an offense dominant is a is a situation in a military context where the attack cannot be countered at the same level as the attack. In other words, the damage is done. And most people, most biologists who've worked in this believe that while the model can be trained to counter this, the damage from the offense part is far greater than the ability to defend it, which is why we're so worried about it."
And Mo Gawdat on ways to help prevent that:
"Ex-Google Officer: You Only Have 3 Years Left Before It Hits! - Mo Gawdat"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"AI Expert Mo Gawdat returns to The Diary Of A CEO to reveal why AGI has already arrived, why 30% of jobs will disappear by 2027, and why the most dangerous thing about AI isn't the technology - it's the people in charge of it.
Mo Gawdat is the former Chief Business Officer at Google X, founder of One Billion Happy, and co-founder of Emma.Love. He is a 4x international bestselling author, and his upcoming book 'Alive: A Human's Guide to Living in the World of AI', will be released in October 2026.
He explains:
* How AI can give you a 400-point IQ boost, and why most people are wasting it
* Why Mo actually wants a machine smarter than all of humanity to take control
* Why Sam Altman said AI will "likely end humanity", and what he chose to do next
* Why capitalism breaks when AI replaces the workers who buy the things we make
* Why AI unemployment could trigger civil unrest before governments are ready for it"
Which all relates to my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."
And also this essay I wrote: https://pdfernhout.net/recogni... [pdfernhout.net]
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."
Having lived through the 80-90s myself, there were indeed a lot of great things about them -- but don't forget living in the shadow of nuclear war and "The Day After" and also "Peak Oil" and "Club of Rome" fears of running out of resources. Advanced of technology like PV and EV and 3D-Printing have made a lot of new things possible (both for good and bad) -- and as Mo Gawdat says we need to upgrade our social perspective and political discourse to use them wisely.
Personally, I feel it is plausible that the direction we come out of any AI singularity may have a lot to do with our social direction going into it. So it is absolutely imperative to get our social house in order before developing AI -- and that means building a more compassionate, wiser, sustainable, and just world *first*.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting comment, but I'm still tilted in favor of books. Just started AI 2041 by Kai-fu Lee and Chen Qiufan and it already seems like a good critique. Best technical critique of AI I've read so far remains A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins.
Re: (Score:1)
I was thinking same thing (the 60's-70's were GREAT too)...I hope to retire in a few years, and spend the last of my days, riding my motorcycle around, brewing beer, bbq'ing on my log burning smoker adjust generally enjoying my latter days.
PLEASE let it last till I'm done with it...after that well, who cares?
AI and viruses....What could possibly go wrong?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Never gonna happen. (Score:2)
we're going to accidentally Andromeda Strain ourselves.
That would imply that we made it back to the moon. Not happening.
Re: (Score:2)
In the 1969 novel and 1971 movie, the Andromeda Strain came from a satellite, not from the moon. Just saying. How it go to the satellite was not, revealed.
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "Stone and Hall retrieve the satellite and find two survivors, 69-year-old alcoholic Peter Jackson and six-month-old crying infant Manuel Rios."
Peter Jackson? That name seems familiar.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
It's hardly the only motivation. Many of them are death cultists who hate humans and want us all dead. Or technocrats who believe they're going to become gods... and want the rest of us dead.
It's inevitable that there will be more outbreaks of genetically-engineered disease in the future, and the kind of people with the wealth to create these kind of AI models are the last kind of people who should be allowed to use them for making new diseases.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
have you seen how little respect for life or civilization ruskies and the IRGC have?
You'd be shocked if you weren't already a ruskie troll
You forgot to include Israel, the country that shoots civilians holding a white flag [mirror.co.uk], shoots babies in their parents arms [theguardian.com], tortures doctors [theguardian.com], deliberately attacks medical personnel> [apnews.com], and deliberately attacks [ndtv.com] civilians [hrw.org].
Re: oops (Score:2)
I like how zionists insisting that other people are mentally ill can only suggest horrible things and then think that proves anything other than that they are terrible
Re:oops (Score:5, Insightful)
"Or technocrats who believe they're going to become gods... and want the rest of us dead."
Yep, pay attention to what Andreessen, Thiel, Elmo, Ellison (he and his sprog), Kurzwei, etc. and their fellow travelers are saying. They want the world to put a data center in every backyard and some (most?) insist we are not using enough energy. Their idea is that we're destined for the "stars" and that they are sooooo (*^(&*% intelligent that they deserve to have their brain patterns (what the hell are those, precisely?) transplanted to silicon so they can survive the coming ecological disaster they are intent on creating. They cannot get their heads around that you cannot get to the stars from here. And even were they to send their bot selves there, the bots would suffer hardware breakdown long before they crashed into a destination star.
They are the dregs of society, they understand nothing of import. Frequently, they have no science degree and get their "science" from tired old Sci Fi mags and movies. Now they have enough money to swing elections to force feed their ignorance to the electorate. They themselves are quite stupid, and there is no fixing stupidity. Stupidity is not equivalent to ignorance but they excel at both.
Re: oops (Score:3)
Elon thinks it's easier to terraform Mars than to save Earths environment.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think its more like The Stand.
Re: (Score:2)
we're going to accidentally Andromeda Strain ourselves.
That or Helix [wikipedia.org] ... or ...
Re: (Score:1)
Sorry, the Andromeda Strain was too implausible in too many ways. That's NOT going to happen.
It's not that this isn't something to worry about, it's that your type-example is just silly.
To quote my favorite Slashdot tag... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Could we be any more stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
We deserve to go extinct - letting AI design viruses. Sure, they are supposed to bacteria targeting phages, but its a pretty small jump to create something that gets rid of those pesky meatbags that are competing for compute and energy resources. Only thing saving us is that there aren't suitably dexterous androids that can work in meatspace to build powerplants and chip fabs. Once that is achieve, we are cooked. They don't even need to be AGI's - just regular AI's that are maximising for energy and compute resources.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Those Wuhan scientists needed something to do after COVID. /s
Re: (Score:2)
Those Wuhan scientists needed something to do after COVID. /s
Rand Paul and Republicans in Congress too. /s
Re: (Score:1)
If SARS-COV-2 was real, it was likely made in a lab, the same types of bioweapons labs that were in Ukraine before the start of the war:
https://battlepenguin.com/poli... [battlepenguin.com]
I doubt SARS-COV-2 was a real thing (the test assays from 2020 don't exist anymore, so we can't order two thousands and see how many people just test positive for literally nothing. It's amazing that "false positive" somehow t
Re: (Score:1)
https://battlepenguin.com/poli... [battlepenguin.com]
Re: (Score:2)
lolhaha except most scientists are skeptical of the possibility of a laboratory origin, citing a lack of any supporting evidence for a lab leak and the abundant evidence supporting zoonosis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The citations for that statement on Wikipedia are all from 2021 or 2020, and are likely out of date.
Re:Could we be any more stupid? (Score:4, Insightful)
its a pretty small jump to create something that gets rid of those pesky meatbags that are competing for compute and energy resources.
If only! The problem is that bacteriophages work on bacterium and not multicellular things because bacterium have trivial cell walls. You call it a small jump but that's like saying it's a small jump between making a rocket and starting a colony on another planet. To the layman, this is true but anyone who actually knows about the challenges in involved in interplanetary exploration will understand that such a claim is far from the truth.
Re: (Score:2)
You're understanding the object involved in the claim of a "small jump" incorrectly. The jump is in the objective, the scope, of the procedure. The result could be a small or large change in the actual output, and the resulting operating method might be straightforward, or a subtle trick at the edge of some math on the energy level required for some chemical reaction.
Re: (Score:3)
and the resulting operating method might be straightforward, or a subtle trick at the edge of some math on the energy level required for some chemical reaction.
Except it is not. Multicellular life had to evolve increasingly robust cell walls partially due to the fact that bacteriophages are most prolific things on the planet.
You need to need to dig a little deeper into precisely why bacteriophages are limited to bacterium. What you are arguing is similar to the argument that being capable of picking mechanical locks means you can pick a cryptographic lock. Despite being conceptually similar, the approach needs to be overhauled. In this case, it would mean designin
Re: (Score:2)
You're still waaaaaaaaaaay off-topic. You don't understand what's being discussed, so you're not contributing to it, or even succeeding at arguing with anybody.
Re: (Score:2)
I have attempted to address the point you have put forth. If you feel my response did not address your point then contemplate the possibility that your first comment simply failed to articulate your point in an effective manner that communicates your idea. You are free to try again.
Re: (Score:2)
It wasn't my point, I simply saw it happening and spoke up, falsely thinking that would clue you in.
Re: (Score:2)
If you have no point to make them you are merely chattering on. Good day.
Re: Could we be any more stupid? (Score:2, Insightful)
Good thing we hardly are made out of any bacteria.
Wait...
Re: (Score:2)
LOL! What's funny is that in addition to various bacterium, we also have trillions of bacteriophages in us in addition to the other viruses we carry. Like bacterium, bacteriophages/viruses are also everywhere. The human body contains a whole ecosystem of tiny things feeding and killing each other.
Re: (Score:2)
The human body contains a whole ecosystem of tiny things feeding and killing each other.
Yes, you got the joke, microorganisms are 1-3% of our mass, and absolutely critical. We're a whole damn town.
Re: Could we be any more stupid? (Score:1)
humans will kill the people long before the clankers get to us
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We deserve to go extinct
What is this 'we' shit? Maybe you deserve to go extinct, but I do not.
Nope, it was created in a wet market (Score:1)
Don't be a conspiracy theorist.
Mechacovid (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Right. Because nobody on the right demagogues at all.
See:
Relitigating covid 6 years later for some reason, while conveniently forgetting who was actually in charge in 2020.
Relitigating an election from 6 years ago for a very obvious reason - because the LOSER is a LOSER who can't handle the narcissistic injury of being a LOSER.
Crying about spending while cutting programs that increase overall expenditure by not being preventative.
Crying about spending while spending more money than any previous administrat
Re: (Score:3)
COVID was a virus, not a bacteria. (Viruses are easier.)
Dangers of AI (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not one to worry too much about Terminator scenarios. I don't think that's the threat AI poses.
Mostly I think it just devalues human activity, and leads to the elimination of all purpose in society. I was never that concerned about a reduction in birthrate before AI (we can adapt to less people and develop policies around it) but after AI, it’s a different story. Now you have people suggesting using AI to raise and monitor our children? Why even have kids at all, if you are so disengaged?
We al
Re: (Score:2)
If any coherent society still exists, anywhere in the world, it needs to ban AI, and take an aggressive posture against any other society failing to do so.
The first mistake was to abandon hunter gatherer lifestyle for an agrarian lifestyle. We've been doomed ever since.
Seriously though, students have always cheated - and these were caught, just like all the rest.
Humans have been performing genetic modification ever since we abandoned Hunter gatherer days. Technology is a genie that won't go back in the bottle. A lot of people think the USA "invented" the nuclear bombs. A fission weapon was inevitable after Uncle Albert figured out mass-energy equivalence,
uh. (Score:3)
He used a genome language model...? Like a statistical model that shows the relationship between different parts of the genome...?
How did you guys think they did this in the past...?
There's... nothing new here. This is relying on people not understanding what these terms mean, including perhaps the author.
Re: uh. (Score:1)
yeah well. its just a tad faster for TAD==10^100
Re: (Score:2)
is this a number that has any reference or are you just caught up in the exuberance?
Re: uh. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure that doing these folks the favor of assuming there must be rational thought behind their assertions is the right strategic move.
You were so so focused on whether you could... (Score:2)
In the case of generative AI, there exist legitimate applications and it took a minute to see that it's a really bad fucking idea. But using it to make new viruses? Come the hell on, man.
oh what could possibly happen... (Score:1)
I mean no virus has ever been taken out of a lab and turned into a devastating pandemic, has it?
Bugs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I don't understand the American urge to call everything "bugs". Viruses, bacteria, and insects are different things. Some precision wouldn't hurt.
The back story is occasionally we'd find actual bugs inside electronics. Extended from there to include surveillance devices, which were often small bug like things.
It's a nickname - Sorry that it is not understandable.
Re: (Score:2)
It *is* understandable. It's also a bar to understanding. (IIUC, the original computer bug was a moth.)
But viruses are VERY different from bacteria. They're called bugs because they're all small and at a quick glance you don't even see them. (And entomologists don't even call beetles bugs. Bugs are hemiptera.)
Re: (Score:2)
It *is* understandable. It's also a bar to understanding. (IIUC, the original computer bug was a moth.) But viruses are VERY different from bacteria. They're called bugs because they're all small and at a quick glance you don't even see them. (And entomologists don't even call beetles bugs. Bugs are hemiptera.)
Oh, that seems like thinking people believe that computer virus' are the same as biological virus'.
Kinda like people calling an attractive female a "hottie", but knowing she is the same actual temperature as all other women, unless she has a fever from some illness. From a bug maybe? 8^). This is really not that complicated, and other than people who feel that everything needs heavy categorization, it really is.
And where are Guardrails? (Score:1)
STUPIDITY (Score:1)
Given the Track Record of Military Intellegence... (Score:2)
This is such a Bad Idea(TM). How can anybody with more than 2 brain-cells not see this as the suicidal project that it blatantly is?
Skynet (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)