Carl Zimmer reports:

For the first time, scientists have used artificial intelligence to create new kinds of viruses, raising hopes for medical advances while also raising the disturbing possibility that the technology could someday be used to invent dangerous pathogens.

Synthesizing viruses from scratch is hardly new. 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 the new study, published Thursday in the journal Science, goes well beyond duplicating viral genes. Scientists at Stanford University and the Arc Institute, a research organization in Palo Alto, Calif., 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.

“This is an important milestone,” said Patrick Cai, a synthetic biologist at the University of Manchester, who was not involved in the study.

The viruses dreamed up by A.I. do not pose a threat to humans, because they are all similar to a naturally occurring virus called Phi X-174, which can infect only bacteria.

But the new study adds to growing worries that artificial intelligence might enable the creation of a new generation of biological weapons, from deadly poisons to unstoppable pandemics.

Dr. Moritz Hanke, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security who was not involved in the new study, said governments and scientific organizations have been slow to develop guardrails that could block the creation of a deadly virus — even as the science races ahead. [Continue reading…]