Reducing AIxBio Risks

NTI President and CEO Christine E. Wormuth joins fellow leaders in calling on U.S. policymakers to act with urgency and establish clear national standards for DNA synthesis screening.

The AIxBio field stands at a critical juncture where rapid capability advances are outpacing governance frameworks and safety measures. The next 18 months will likely prove pivotal in determining whether voluntary safety practices by AI companies, emerging evaluation frameworks, and international coordination efforts can keep pace with technological development.

The convergence of artificial intelligence and the life sciences is reshaping what’s possible in biology, delivering major advances–ranging from accelerating vaccine discovery to advancing new tools for mitigating the effects of climate change–and new risks. NTI | bio’s AIxBio Horizon Scan looks ahead to where AIxBio capabilities are headed over the coming years.

Some of the world’s largest AI companies—Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic—have warned that their models could be misused to cause harm with biology. The India AI Impact Summit is a critical moment for policymakers, scientists, developers, and biosecurity experts to work together on responsible governance that reduces AIxBio risks.

Managed access will be critical for reducing biosecurity risks related to the misuse of biological AI tools. By working to develop best practices for each element of this framework—risk levels, tiered access, and practices to verify legitimacy—developers of biological AI tools and the broader life sciences community can reduce risks while maintaining the benefits of these tools.

The AI-biology convergence offers enormous benefits but also brings about risks as we’ve never seen before. Without action from multiple disciplines, the race for AI development and dominance could become a race to the bottom when it comes to safety and security.

AIxBio capabilities hold immense promise—but they also introduce unprecedented risks. The exploitation of AIxBio capabilities for harm is a plausible near-term risk—and the time for action is now. NTI | bio offers actionable recommendations for governments, industry leaders, and philanthropic organizations to prevent catastrophic misuse.

Innovation requires security, and security requires innovation. Congress needs to act decisively to ensure U.S. leadership in biotechnology is paired with governance that keeps its development secure.

As the capabilities of biological AI tools continue to advance at an accelerating pace, it is vital that DNA synthesis providers and others in the biosecurity space embrace new guardrails to prevent their misuse.

Over the past decade, governments, private industry, and academic institutions have increased their investments in bioscience research and development, yielding global benefits. However, these advancements have also increased the risk of deliberate misuse of biology to cause harm.

NTI | bio partnered with Lattice Automation to design and pilot a standard for capturing and transmitting metadata.

A pandemic is not a once in a century event, and the international community must prepare now for the next one. It is essential the international community strike a balance between fostering and supporting beneficial AIxBio innovation while guarding against accidental or deliberate misuse of these tools.

AI biodesign tools offer many beneficial uses, from engineered crops to vaccine development, but tools that can engineer biological agents could also be misused to cause harm.

New report from NTI | bio offers recommendations for urgent actions that leaders within government, industry, the scientific community, and civil society should take to safeguard AI-bio capabilities.