Significant advances in artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years offer tremendous potential 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.
To reduce biosecurity risks that arise at the intersection of AI and the life sciences, NTI | bio convened experts in the fields of synthetic biology, machine learning, bioinformatics, and international security policy on January 11, 2024 to outline steps toward establishing an international AI-Bio Forum.
This work builds on a key recommendation from a recent NTI | bio report, “The Convergence of Artificial Intelligence and the Life Sciences.” This AI-Bio Forum will:
There is currently no international body that can coordinate global engagement in these issues as the field rapidly evolves or that comprehensively brings together the various important but fragmented efforts to reduce risks associated with the intersection of AI and biology.
NTI | bio will continue to work with experts in the field to scope the new international AI-Bio Forum, define its initial structure, and identify key participants. The rapidly evolving risks in the sector underscore the need to establish the AI-Bio Forum quickly, while balancing the need for coalition building and establishing lasting, sustainable solutions.
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NTI | bio and Concordia AI, with technical input from SecureBio, have launched the AIxBio Technical Working Group on Evaluation Practice. Convened through the AIxBio Global Forum, the Working Group will bring together experts from organizations in China, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States that develop or conduct biological capability evaluations of AI systems.
More than 35 leading experts highlight the risks posed by rapidly advancing capabilities at the convergence of AI and the life sciences and call on governments, industry, the scientific community, and funders to take action to safeguard this technology.
New YouGov polling commissioned by NTI and ReThink Media finds that nearly 80 percent of registered voters, across party lines, say it is in the interest of U.S. national security to work with China to mitigate catastrophic threats associated with nuclear risks, AI development, and bioterrorism.
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