AI “Manufactures” Viruses

The AI revolution is reaching everything around us. It does not leave even the eye of a needle untouched on the planet. But when it reaches biology and the business of viruses, that is frightening, and we all say: may God protect us.

There is a report about a Stanford University laboratory where a group of researchers worked on a generative AI program or algorithm that will not answer your questions. Its work is genomics, the part responsible for the genetic code of instructions inside DNA.

The idea is that this algorithm writes new genomes, and the people in that laboratory were able, in this way, to manufacture, yes, manufacture, new viruses that do not exist in our beautiful natural world in the first place.

Of course, scenes from films about wild biological attacks, bacterial contamination, biological warfare, deformed embryos, genetic mutations and many other dark calamities have now come to mind. Frankly, you are entitled to that, because every conspiracy theory is present around such matters and the devil is in the details.

If the good people in the Stanford University laboratory have a noble and clear aim of helping humans treat disease, there will certainly also be someone lurking and watching to understand the matter and start causing harmful trouble.

In any case, these good researchers were able to use it to design around 16 types of bacteriophages, or phages, viruses whose job is to attack and eliminate bacteria. They are like an antibiotic, but even more efficient. Why?

Because they found these phages were more efficient and better able to attack the well-known bacterial species we all know as Escherichia coli than natural phages.

Naturally, they consider this an early stage, and afterwards they want to work on larger, more complex living organisms than bacteria, which represent a simple form of living organism.

So this is good and beautiful. In the end, AI is doing useful things. Why, then, are people worried about it?

It is natural and logical for them to worry, and they are entitled to it. Just as there are decent people, there are harmful people too. Then we enter the debate over good and evil, the development of synthetic biology and the frightening fears behind it.

But in the end, we will not be able to stop development or prevent it altogether. All we should do is always support its good side so it can confront its bad side. That is the continuity of life and a struggle that will never stop.

About the author: Khaled Abushadi is Director of the Global Markets Unit at Argaam. He has more than 16 years of experience covering and analysing international markets and economic trends, from equities and currencies to precious metals and commodities.