The specter of AI-enabled bioweapons is a wake-up call for biotech

AI researchers and company leaders are warning that AI tools pose serious risks, particularly because they could be misused to design bioweapons (weapons created from biological materials like viruses or toxins). The concern is real: in 2022, researchers showed that an AI molecule generator could create 40,000 potentially dangerous chemical compounds in just six hours, and today's AI chatbots can provide instructions on complex biological experiments to anyone, combined with increasingly accessible gene-editing tools.