3.1 Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Biotechnology

Abstract

Integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and biotechnology (AIxBio) creates revolutionary opportunities for progress in advancing the bioeconomy and addressing health concerns. AI advances promise to greatly accelerate beneficial biological discoveries and innovation and will undoubtedly be one of the deepest contributions of AI to people and society. However, AI methods can also increase risks of accidents and enable malevolent activities aimed at deliberately harmful applications such as bioweapons development. Effective AIxBio governance requires frameworks that enable the great rewards expected from AI in biosciences but that also consider more costly outcomes made possible by AI advances. Recent literature on AIxBio risk management highlights strategies that include tiered access controls, AI auditing mechanisms, and mandatory biological molecule synthesis screening and monitoring. However, many of these potential guardrails have yet to be developed and/or adequately evaluated. In addition to developing practical, technical solutions, it will also be important to develop guidelines and regulations, as well as incentives to follow these, to drive broad implementation of effective risk reduction solutions at the national and international level. Such policies can address significant gaps in national and global governance, but it will also be important to harmonize these approaches to address any regulatory divergence and inconsistencies in risk management across key world players.

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Developed from the Asilomar discussion on existing and future threats stemming from the use of AI in Biotechnology. Outlines the current state of the art globally and proposes best practices and possible risk mitigation strategies.
This entreaty was created as part of The Spirit of Asilomar and the Future of Biotechnology summit (February 23-26, 2025) in Pacific Grove, CA.
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Bromberg, Y., Altman, R., Imperiale, M., Horvitz, E., Dus, M., Townshend, R., Yao, V., Treangen, T., Alexanian, T., Szymanski, E., Yassif, J., Anta, R., Lindner, A., Schmidt, M., Diggans, J., Esvelt, K. M., MOLLA, K.A., Phelan, R., Wang, M., … Matias de Carvalho Bittencourt, D. (2025). 3.1 Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Biotechnology. Rice University. https://doi.org/10.25611/1233-X161

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