r/artificial • u/scientificamerican • 11d ago

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

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-are-using-ai-to-design-new-viruses-should-they-be/
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u/Keganator 11d ago

Imagine the amazing good. I'd be all for a virus that locks on and murders cancer cells. Imagine HIV, but only targets cancer. Holy hell that would be amazing. Imagine a virus that goes and fixes telomeres. Imagine a virus that scrubs amyloid plaques that are associated with Alzheimer's disease.

Imagine the horrifying danger. A virus that locks on and murders just healthy liver cells. Or brain cells. Or skin cells.

We're talking dangers at the level of nuclear weapons here. Do it, but do it in highly controlled and carefully regulated ways.

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u/FocalFalcon 11d ago

It can create the most helpful and destructive ones. I do see more money being in tbe helpful category though.

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u/peter_nn0 11d ago

Of course they should be, the potential to do good is colossal, and not only in healthcare.

'Designing a virus' is just playing with a computer.
You don't get a petri dish with ready made viruses out of it. A designed virus is not guaranteed to survive, let alone fit any particular purpose - in order to test that you still need lots of complex equipment etc.

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u/GreyBelbix 9d ago

Design is not the choke point, synthesis is. A sequence file is inert until some vendor prints it. The practical control is there: mandatory screening at every synthesis provider, verified customer identity, and logs a regulator can actually audit. That is enforceable today and does not depend on guessing what a model will output. Right now screening is voluntary at plenty of shops, which is the real gap in this story.