"In the study, the team used an AI model called Evo, which is akin to ChatGPT, to create new virus genomes - the complete sets of genetic instructions for the organisms. Just like ChatGPT has been trained on articles, books and text conversations, Evo has been trained on millions of bacteriophage genomes. The researchers evaluated thousands of AI-generated sequences before narrowing them down to 302 viable bacteriophages."
"While the AI viruses are 'bacteriophages', meaning they only infect bacteria and not humans, some experts are fearful such technology could spark a new pandemic or come up with a catastrophic new biological weapon. Eric Horvitz, computer scientist and chief scientific officer of Microsoft, warns that 'AI could be misused to engineer biology'. 'AI powered protein design is one of the most exciting, fast-paced areas of AI right now, but that speed also raises concerns about potential malevolent uses,' he said."
"'It was quite a surprising result that was really exciting for us, because it shows that this method might potentially be very useful for therapeutics,' said study co-author Samuel King, bioengineer at Stanford University."
Evo, an AI model akin to ChatGPT, generated complete bacteriophage genomes from scratch after training on millions of existing bacteriophage sequences. Thousands of AI-designed sequences were evaluated, yielding 302 viable bacteriophages and 16 that infected and killed strains of Escherichia coli. The AI-designed viruses are bacteriophages and do not infect humans or other eukaryotes. The ability of AI to design infectious biological agents creates biosafety and biosecurity concerns, including potential misuse to engineer pathogens, the risk of pandemics, and the possibility of novel biological weapons. Experts urge proactive, diligent risk management.
Read at Mail Online
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