AI-based tools seem to be causing security threats on a nearly daily basis, in part because we’ve been slow to recognize potential threats. One area where we seem to be ahead of the game, however, is in biosecurity.
As with most things biological, utility goes hand in hand with threats. We’ve developed increasingly sophisticated tools for designing proteins and seen some major successes, such as AI-designed enzymes that can digest plastics or block venom proteins. But these same tools could be used to make toxins or alter the behavior of viral proteins.
And the software we use to identify DNA sequences that encode potentially threatening proteins doesn’t pick out AI-designed proteins, since nobody has characterized them well enough to know that they’re threats. Nearly a year after that risk was flagged, it still wasn’t clear what anyone could do about it.