The Convergence of Artificial Intelligence and the Life Sciences: Safeguarding Technology, Rethinking Governance, and Preventing Catastrophe

Rapid scientific and technological advances are fueling a 21st-century biotechnology revolution. Accelerating developments in the life sciences and in technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and robotics are enhancing scientists’ abilities to engineer living systems for a broad range of purposes. These groundbreaking advances are critical to building a more productive, sustainable, and healthy future for humans, animals, and the environment.

Significant advances in AI in recent years offer tremendous benefits for modern bioscience and bioengineering by supporting the rapid development of vaccines and therapeutics, enabling the development of new materials, fostering economic development, and helping fight climate change. However, AI-bio capabilities—AI tools and technologies that enable the engineering of living systems—also could be accidentally or deliberately misused to cause significant harm, with the potential to cause a global biological catastrophe.

These tools could expand access to knowledge and capabilities for producing well-known toxins, pathogens, or other biological agents. Soon, some AI-bio capabilities also could be exploited by malicious actors to develop agents that are new or more harmful than those that may evolve naturally. Given the rapid development and proliferation of these capabilities, leaders in government, bioscience research, industry, and the biosecurity community must work quickly to anticipate emerging risks on the horizon and proactively address them by developing strategies to protect against misuse.

To address the pressing need to govern AI- bio capabilities, this report explores three key questions:

• What are current and anticipated AI capabilities for engineering living systems?
• What are the biosecurity implications of these developments?
• What are the most promising options for governing this important technology that will effectively guard against misuse while enabling beneficial applications?

To answer these questions, this report presents key findings informed by interviews with more than 30 individuals with expertise in AI, biosecurity, bioscience research, biotechnology, and governance of emerging technologies. Building on these findings, the report includes recommendations from the authors on the path toward developing more robust governance approaches for AI-bio capabilities to reduce biological risks without unduly hindering scientific advances.