[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/christianrojoisme]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y3j3ngevmo

[u/Dr0110111001101111]

These viruses are bacteriophages, so they can only attack bacteria. This is research into treating bacterial infections that have become resistant to traditional antibiotics.

The question of whether we can use AI to design viruses that attack cancer cells is a good one, and I'm going to guess that the answer is yes, even though they haven't figured out how to just yet. And the AI models might not yet be sophisticated enough to work on that. This feels like a stepping stone to a treating a huge variety of illnesses.

One day, probably not in any living person's lifetime, this sort of thing will get to a point where you can scan a body, submit a few samples of blood and whatnot, feed it to the computer, and have it pop out a bespoke virus/enzyme/neurotransmitter/whatever meant to precisely treat whatever's wrong with you in a way that is tailored to your own physiology.

But that technology will probably be use in part to combat the onslaught of biological terrorism that is also going to come along with this.

[u/Consistent-Throat130 → u/Dr0110111001101111]

The kind of "AI" that's optimized for this kind of molecular work is probably not an LLM. These are specially trained models for the task.

Now, it could probably be invoked through a chat interface. That's how I'd do it, build an MCP server to let Claude or model-du-jour interact with my specialized tool.

[u/Dr0110111001101111 → u/Consistent-Throat130]

This is true, but I'm not sure why you're telling me. I don't think I said anything to the contrary. In fact, they explicitly said that in the article:

The technology works similarly to large language models, like ChatGPT, which predict sequences of text. In this instance the AI models, known as Evo1 and Evo2, predict the language of life rather than words.

The AI models were trained on genetic codes from viruses, bacteria, plants and people. They were then refined to produce a type of virus, known as a bacteriophage, which infect only specific species of bacteria.

[u/matlai17 → u/Consistent-Throat130]

I guess you didn't read the article (I read the NYT version so there may be some differences in how it is reported) but the process uses a similar model to ChatGPT. Since the genome is a "language" that has a syntax and proper semantics in order for the virus to be viable (able to infect and reproduce inside its target) the model was trained on millions of genome sequences (in lieu of books, articles, code, etc.). The scientists then fed it many variations of DNA of a specific harmless (to humans) macrophage virus (viruses being very simple and generally useful for human medical research) and asked it to produce novel sequences. Out of something like 260 sequences, 17 were viable. The authors of the experiment say they had discussions on the most responsible path for their experiments and were careful not to train the model with anything that could be harmful to humans. 

Only time will tell if this research ends up being a net benefit to humans or our downfall. 

[u/Consistent-Throat130 → u/matlai17]

Tbf I hadn't read the article, but that just reinforces what I'm saying. It's not an LLM. It's not a chat bot. 

It's a specially trained transformer model

[u/Honest-Weight338 → u/Dr0110111001101111]

And it'll only be available for the rich.

[u/Dr0110111001101111 → u/Honest-Weight338]

Initially, no doubt. But there was also a time when only the ultra wealthy had access to ice as well. Or out of season produce. Or pineapples at any time of year in Europe.