AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?
Stanford researchers used a genomic language model to design 16 functional bacteriophages from scratch, marking the first complete AI-generated viral genomes. The viruses successfully infected antibiotic-resistant E. coli strains, hinting at bespoke phage therapies. However, experts warn the same technology could lower barriers to creating dangerous pathogens, and an independent analysis found the phages were 97% identical to their template, raising questions about true novelty.
The question is no longer whether generative viral genome design will exist. It is whether society can build oversight that allows its benefits to unfold while preventing it from enabling serious harm.
- SubiculumCode
AI is an existential threat, full stop. It can also help us solve many of our greatest problems. Let's not let it solve those problems by removing us as the quickest shortcut.
- timr
The design was never the hard part. You still have to make the thing.
Designing a modifcation to an existing virus is perhaps more achievable, but the implementation is still the hard part.
- hoppp
The regulation at the DNA Printer level works I think, as long as nobody invents a good at home DNA printer, but if they do that there is no need for custom viruses, somebody can take an existing one that is known to be deadly and just print it.
- Alive-in-2025
I think it's certain that people will try recreating old viruses or making alternatives to them. It will be too easy. Make 5 variants of small pox, 5 variants of sars. Release them at once all around the world to make it hard to fight. It will be too easy for some crazy angry people to do this. I just hope that our defenses and ability to sequence them and respond.
- evilelectron
Get ready for the next adventure in the saga of 12 Monkeys, with AI starts like Bruce Wills, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt and Christopher Plummer, coming to a bio lab around you. The experience of a life time one you can't miss, it is in the air.
- PeterStuer
It is complicated, because the real question is about who gets to design the virusses, and who gets to design the antidotes.
- acjohnson55
Something I've been worried about for years is the proliferation of technologies that give ever smaller numbers of people with smaller amounts resources the ability to impact billions of people, in potentially irreversible ways. Combined with automation, this is a recipe for disaster. We're clearly lacking in the ability to regulate and govern ourselves, and real world market forces (as opposed to the hypothetical free market) encourage reckless aggressiveness at the level of companies and countries.
Although, I must admit, as a doomer, I'm pleasantly surprised things aren't already worse than they are.
- mehraban
Yes, we should, but even here distribution is an serious issue.