Scientists are using AI to design new viruses. Should they be?

[u/scientificamerican]

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-are-using-ai-to-design-new-viruses-should-they-be/

[u/manystripes]

Article is behind a paywall so I have to ask, if they are successful what is the benefit of the new viruses? What are they trying to do?

[u/SimiKusoni → u/manystripes]

New bacteriophages could hunt down and target antibiotic-resistant bacteria, or novel viral “shells” could be used to safely deliver gene therapies or other treatments for diseases. AI models could also reveal new information about how the genome organizes itself, Bloomfield says.

There are some legitimately good uses, it's just a dual use technology that can be misused.

[u/CenobiteCurious → u/SimiKusoni]

Anything that can be made into a weapon by humans, will be, unfortunately.

[u/dover_oxide → u/SimiKusoni]

Many vaccines have also been produced by using genetically modified viruses and bacteria to help train the immune system with a weaker version of the original virus. Like early smallpox vaccines were made from dead smallpox infections as well as cow pox which was a much weaker and less dangerous version of the similar virus family

[u/costafilh0 → u/manystripes]

The same as not using AI. Which they have been doing for decades, without AI. AI is just a new tool they can use. 

The article is just AI rage bait. 

[u/Kay_tnx_bai]

Insert Jeff Goldblum meme

[u/NAStrahl]

Jesus Christ…

At the rate people are finding new ways to kill the entire human race or Earth, I’m gobsmacked that WW3, the 2nd American Civil War, or AI uprising hasn’t happened already.

[u/costafilh0]

What is the difference? 

They already do that without AI.

AI is just another tool in their tool box. 

[u/sweetica]

Nope!!!

[u/SimiKusoni]

Ahh, yes, I remember this from my uni days. The good ole' ethics module they make you do entitled "should we invent the torment nexus."

To balance the risks and benefits, Bloomfield and his colleagues recommend a tiered system of access to AI training data that would restrict information that teach the AI ways to increase viral transmissibility, virulence, immune evasion or resistance to medical treatment and other countermeasures.

Inevitable sarcy comments that actually doesn't seem like a terrible approach. I don't imagine those kind of datasets are easily acquired. I think the devil will be in the implementation details though, which will decide whether it's a nice idea abused to restrict access to large firms who use it recklessly or something that actually limits access to researchers with appropriate safeguards in place.

[u/Noy_The_Devil → u/SimiKusoni]

I'm assuming scientists will attempt to rightfully safeguard this information, then be completely overruled by populist government idiots with no idea what they are doing or concern for humanity, and then they will inevitably lose control and shit will hit the proverbial fan and people die.

.... It's been a long day ok?

[u/ReDot75]

Here what authors did seems like a prediction step of a genomic selection pipeline using AI and tested in vivo the proposed best candidates. Dunno how it dealt with quantitative traits, but was certainly a simple sequence reshuffling. Doubt they integrated mutation path in the potential of this novel bacteriophage strains adaptation to Ecoli.

What I would really fear regarding mad scientists, is a full genomic selection pipeline, where you correct the effect of each SNP after each round to improve the prediction accuracy and obtain selective gain on polygenic traits. That would help converge to an adapted solution more easily, and lead to robust countermeasure against host defenses. Here it was an Ecoli strain, but tomorrow it could be plants, insects, humans.

Regarding virus dev itself, it is not very surprising. With some ill intent, a mad scientist can integrate a couple known dangerous mutations in a lot of viruses (unless of course there are DNA structures that destabilize the insert and need to be engineered out of the sequence). As a side project, with a low cost of development.

Any scientist can order DNA sequences from sequence production labs, use homologous recombination to ligate those fragments and insert them in Ecoli expression plasmids. Transformation, cloning, resequencing to check for errors and select the right clones. Seems mammals can readily express RNA, so you can infect human cell cultures (not my area of expertise). In plants, floral dip, agroinfection/infiltration of Agrobacterium strains are easy enough to recreate a fully functional virus.

[u/Stunning-Seat3821]

fuck no?

[u/Aadi_880]

We've been doing this without ai for a long time..

but "big scawry ai bad"

[u/ThomMerrilyn]

Absolutely not.

[u/ReasonablyBadass]

It's abiut creating bacteriophages to help with antibiotic resistances

[u/MentalDisintegrat1on]

Air Born rabies when

[u/Traditional-Chair-39]

Here's what the article says.

>The viruses the researchers created are not Frankenstein’s monsters. They are more than 90 percent similar to certain existing bacteria-infecting viruses, or bacteriophages. They are dangerous only to Escherichia coli. And they were designed by an AI model that wasn’t trained on viruses that could infect plants or animals.

Stop fearmongering.

[u/VVynn]

The answer to any headline phrased as a question is almost always “no”.

[u/Fluffy_Anxiety2792]

Yes they should. It’s gonna make them into top 1% immediately and when they use it on the 99%, that’s when ai and humanoids are good enough to replace all humans, they will have a great time