Researchers long ago learned how to manufacture viral genomes; they are used to investigate antiviral drugs and vaccines, as well as to learn how viruses work. But [in] the new study... [s]cientists... taught A.I. to recognize patterns of DNA structure in nature, and then to use that data to write recipes for entirely new viruses. The researchers followed those recipes to create DNA molecules, which they inserted into bacteria. The modified bacteria then produced viruses never seen in nature. The viruses were able to infect other bacteria, demonstrating that they were viable.
August 7, 2026
"For the first time, scientists have used artificial intelligence to create new kinds of viruses... raising the disturbing possibility that the technology could someday be used to invent dangerous pathogens."
I'm reading "This A.I. Just Created Viruses Not Found in Nature/Scientists trained artificial intelligence on libraries of DNA and then asked the model to create recipes for viral genomes. Sixteen of them were viable, yielding new viruses" (NYT gift link).
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46 comments:
Now, this is something I DO worry about.
No Fauci can fast track the next pandemic.
When it comes down to it, I really don't trust human nature when it comes to issues like this, and this is not political at all, for me; I mistrust across the board.
Fauci maintains that since they are "new" viruses, technically it is not Gain of Function, as you can't enhance what never before existed.
Demoxrats/Chinese Communists/ Radical Islam;
HARM, first.
What could possibly go wrong?
Why the fuck would you create harmful viruses not found in nature? This is not good.
If we see how something can be done, that means someone else could also see it, and we'd better do it first. That's the ethics analysis they expect us to accept.
Not with a bang, but a whimper….
"If we see how something can be done, that means someone else could also see it, and we'd better do it first. That's the ethics analysis they expect us to accept."
OK, that's the rationale. But why do a handful of unaccountable scientists get to decide that the risk is worth the reward? Nobody elected them.
Applying the mountain-climbing metaphor, "because it's there", should not be applied to everything.
I have long thought, well before the advent of AI, that biological science would end up wiping out most of humanity. I never really worried about nuclear Armageddon, it's biological Armageddon that will do us in. Covid was just a taste.
This technology could be applied to viruses, but since the scientists are working in bacteria, this just seems like a phage they're going through.
There will need to be new laws governing the use of A.I. The primary one should probably be: If you tell the A.I. to do something bad, the rule is that it's going to do it to You, first.
"Fauci maintains that since they are "new" viruses, technically it is not Gain of Function, as you can't enhance what never before existed."
Fauci's a monster. Right up there with you know who.
Biological Borg nanoprobes.
what could POSSIBLY go wrong with this approach?
the "possibility that the technology could someday be used to invent dangerous pathogens.."
not a Flaw.. but a Feature
Original Mike said...
“…I never really worried about nuclear Armageddon, it's biological Armageddon that will do us in. Covid was just a taste.”
Same here. Of the three main categories of “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, biological and chemical concerned me more than nuclear.
...when combined with a large fleet of rogue killer drones for mass dissemination...
"biological and chemical concerned me more than nuclear."
Chemical doesn't have the self-transmission mode of biological.
Since gene printing is a mature technology and AI is open source the idea of regulating it is a dream. Nothing to do with bats or 'wet markets'. If there are rogue states and the odd psycho out there, manufacture of designer pathogens is feasible and the medium term future looks bleak for humans. the bats will be ok though, so there's that.
The Three Body Problem Netflix series has an alien civilization halting human progress through a subtle series of disasters, using probability to kill off innovation in a way that we don't even realize is happening until it's almost too late. Just lots of bad luck.
The book "If Anybody Builds It, Everybody Dies" theorizes something very similar where AI invents targeted viruses that kill off the productive classes in a way that nobody notices until it's too late. Just lots of bad luck.
"Around the same time (2017-2018), the Wuhan institute took another perilous leap forward with its work on the Shitou viruses. It began what Professor Richard Ebright describes as the most dangerous coronavirus experiment ever undertaken. The scientists selected three lab-grown mutant viruses, created by mixing Sars-like viruses with WIV1, which had all been shown to infect human cells. These mutants were then injected into the noses of albino mice with human lungs.
The aim was to see whether the viruses had the potential to spark a pandemic if they were fused together, as they might do naturally in a bat colony. The original WIV1 virus was injected into another group of mice as a comparison.
The mice were monitored in their cages over two weeks. The results were shocking. The mutant virus that fused WIV1 with SHC014 killed 75 per cent of the rodents and was three times as lethal as the original WIV1. In the early days of the infection, the mice’s human-like lungs were found to contain a viral load up to 10,000 times greater than the original WIV1 virus.
The scientists had created a highly infectious super-coronavirus with a terrifying kill-rate that in all probability would never have emerged in nature. The new genetically modified virus was not Covid-19 but it might have been even more deadly if it had leaked."
--London Times, June 10, 2023
I think we have an explanation for the Fermi Paradox.
SOMEDAY?!?!?!? That day was about seven years ago on Wuhan China
"we'd better do it first."
“Mister President, we must not allow a mine shaft gap!”
"If we see how something can be done, that means someone else could also see it, and we'd better do it first. That's the ethics analysis they expect us to accept."
I don't see that this is the thought process going on here. If "it" is to create a virus that will wipe out mankind, what advantage do we accrue if we do it first? Possessing a killer virus is useless militarily.
I think these scientists just can't help themselves exercising their intellectual abilities. As a physicist, I can see that motivation playing out in the Manhattan Project, for example. Unfortunately, if you're playing in the biology field, a lab leak is going to happen eventually. It's inevitable.
Now a terrorist will have other motivations, and AI just might hand him the tools to succeed.
"Possessing a killer virus is useless militarily."
Not if its possessors believe they'll be left alive. That's the definition of military utility vis-a-vis a weapon.
The all new Captain Trips.
"Not if its possessors believe they'll be left alive."
I actually don't think the "establishment" scientists doing these experiments are that stupid (they *are* stupid enough to think their experiments won't leak). The terrorist/mentally-ill, OTOH, want to bring the whole thing crashing down
Affirmative action through pathology and Diversity. All's fair in lust and abortion. Forward!
I respectfully disagree.
The USSR created biological weapons designed to kill everyone. Annie Jacobson in her new book "Biological War" quotes western experts who comment on just such weapons. Some of these viruses contained diseases within diseases. In other words, presuming you even survived the first disease, a second disease would activate, and that would kill you.
"A dual-impact weapon: one that kills physically and also utterly collapses public trust. This was the psychological horror the Soviet biological weapons program sought to inflict on the West."...Jacobsen
Fauci is a fraud and a goal post moving liar. That's why the left adore him.
Sampling through jabbing is a vexing proposition with benefits.
I'm listening to the science.
... a vaxxxing proposition. Maybe a fetus... feature, baby.
...this just seems like a phage they're going through.
---------
Phase + stage = phage! Cool.
So what. Dr. Fauci has already been there and funded that.
"If we see how something can be done, that means someone else could also see it, and we'd better do it first. That's the ethics analysis they expect us to accept."
Seems solid to me. Worked for H-bombs.
“I don't see that this is the thought process going on here. If "it" is to create a virus that will wipe out mankind, what advantage do we accrue if we do it first? Possessing a killer virus is useless militarily.”
Not if you also have the vaccine. But I think the main applications will be financial. You can make a lot of money if you have the vaccine for a brand new plague. Fauci demonstrated that, though I don’t think he did it intentionally. I’m sure China, Russia, et al. have taken note. Why blow up other people’s stuff if you can make them sell it to you cheap?
We need to build the torment nexus before someone else does.
Ann Althouse said...
If we see how something can be done, that means someone else could also see it, and we'd better do it first. That's the ethics analysis they expect us to accept.
It's an argument from stupidity. Because there's so many different ways to make them that all such research can "accomplish" is give terrorists a leg up.
Unless the researchers are such incredible geniuses that they find a way to make a virus that LOOKS like it could be virulent, but actually wouldn't be. And put it out there so the first terrorist group that tries this will use the failed virus, rather than invent one that might succeed.
Which is a great idea for an SF story, and a lousy idea for reality
The we must build it and then we will be protected argument is not clear to me. Covid and flu mutate so fast that vaxxes have no value. We know all about covid but we still can’t stop it after 6 years.
I just assume that this kind of talk is done by scientists who want more leadership jobs at new labs.
"raising the disturbing possibility ..."
Does anyone doubt that this kind of R&D has been going on for a while, here and in lots of other countries both friend and foe? It's just the flip side of using the same technology to develop new antibiotics and antivirals, and the unspoken premise about a biological weapon is that you develop the antidote along with the weapon. What keeps it all in check is not pious promises never to use or develop such stuff, but the reality that if anyone uses a biological weapon like that, they will be met by having one released on them. It's mutual assured destruction, version 2.
@William50
Phage is shorthand for Bacteriophage, which are viruses that infect bacteria. It comes from the Greek word for devour, phagein (Ļį¾°Ī³ĪµįæĪ½).
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