Just came across this and honestly this is pretty wild. Researchers used AI to design completely new viruses that don’t exist in nature. They then actually made some of them in a lab, and 16 of the designs worked. Before anyone panics, these are bacteriophages, so they infect bacteria, not humans. The interesting part is that some of these AI-made viruses were able to kill E. coli, including bacteria that had become resistant to normal phages. So yeah, there could be a genuinely useful side to this, especially with antibiotic resistance becoming such a big problem. But at the same time… we now have AI systems capable of coming up with a complete virus genome, then humans can synthesize it and see if it works. That feels like a pretty big line to cross. Obviously this doesn’t mean someone can just ask ChatGPT to make a deadly virus tomorrow. You still need labs, equipment, biological knowledge etc. But we’ve gone from AI generating text and images to designing proteins, genes, and now apparently functioning viruses. That’s moving fast. I’m not really sure how I feel about it. On one hand this could lead to new treatments and better ways to fight resistant bacteria. On the other hand, I really hope the safety side of this is moving as fast as the technology. submitted by /u/didiTonic
Originally posted by u/didiTonic on r/ArtificialInteligence
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