We need to be ready for biotech’s “ChatGPT” moment

IImagine a world where everything from plastics to concrete is produced from biomass. Personalized cell and gene therapies prevent pandemics and treat previously incurable genetic diseases. The meat is grown in a laboratory; Nutrient-enhanced grains are climate resilient. This is what the future could look like in the coming years.

The next big revolutionary revolution is in biology. It will allow us to fight disease more effectively, feed the planet, generate energy and capture carbon. We are already on the cusp of these opportunities. Last year saw some important milestones: the US approved the production and sale of laboratory-grown meat for the first time; Google DeepMind AI foreseen structures of more than 2 million new materials, which can potentially be used in chips and batteries; Casgevy became the first commercial gene-editing treatment approved using CRISPR. If I were young today, biology would truly be one of the most fascinating things to study.

Like the digital revolution, the biotech revolution is set to transform America’s economy as we know it – and it’s happening faster than we expect, driven by AI. Recent advances in biotechnology are unlocking our ability to program biology like we program computers. Just as OpenAI’s ChatGPT trains on human language input to create new text, AI models trained on biological sequences could design new proteins, predict cancer growth, and create other useful consumables. In the future, AI will be able to help us perform millions of theoretical and real-world biological experiments, predicting results more accurately without arduous trial and error, greatly accelerating the pace of new discoveries.

We are now on the cusp of a “ChatGPT moment” in biology, with significant technological innovation and widespread adoption on the horizon. But how prepared is America to do whatever is necessary to make this happen? I’m incredibly excited about this groundbreaking moment ahead, but it’s critical to ensure it happens on our shores. That’s why I’m serving on the National Security Commission for Emerging Biotechnology. As the Commission recently wrote in its recent interim report, “continued US leadership in biotechnology development is not guaranteed.”

America has a history of pioneering an emerging industry before losing its leadership by outsourcing its production to other parts of the world. This pattern was repeated in high-technology sectors such as passenger cars, consumer electronics, solar panels and, most notably, semiconductors. To avoid the same mistake, it is crucial that we ensure a reliable supply chain, nationally and internationally, that covers everything from raw material extraction to data storage, while building the necessary talent pipeline. Depending on other countries for key components of biotechnology presents enormous economic and national security risks. For example, leaving our genetic information in the hands of our adversaries could potentially help them develop a biological weapon used to target a specific genetic profile. President Biden’s recent executive order aims to prevent the sale of this sensitive personal data to China and other adversary countries.

An investment in both human capital and physical infrastructure will be critical to continued U.S. leadership in biotechnology. These investments need not only come from the government, but must also provide incentives to encourage more private financing, as CHIPS and the Science Act did. There is no exaggeration about how central the bioeconomy will be to U.S. growth over the next fifty years. Currently, the bioeconomy generates at least 5% of US GDP; by comparison, semiconductors make up only about 1% of US GDP. By some measures, 60% of the global economy’s physical inputs could be grown through biological processes – the promise of biology is vast for addressing some of humanity’s greatest challenges, including climate change.

As AI increases our biological engineering capabilities, we will need protective barriers. While it’s easy to imagine doomsday scenarios of lone wolf amateurs building a bioweapon from scratch at home, studies from the Rand Corporation and OpenAI have argued that current large language models like ChatGPT do not significantly increase the risk of creating a threat. biological. as they do not provide new information beyond what is already on the internet. And it’s also important to keep in mind that just because an AI model can engineer new pathogens doesn’t mean users would have the secure wet-lab infrastructure and resources to create them.

However, with the improved accessibility and ease of use of AI tools, the biohazard landscape is constantly evolving. Soon, more complex base models could provide bad actors with more data, scientific knowledge, and troubleshooting skills from experiments, helping to suggest candidate biological agents and help them order biological parts from a diverse set of suppliers to avoid screening protocols.

Organizations such as the Federation of American Scientists and the Nuclear Threat Initiative have recommended the formation of structured red teams – actively searching for vulnerabilities to preemptively protect our biosecurity infrastructure – for current methods of screening DNA sequences and assessing biological capabilities. of AI tools. More than 90 scientists have just signed a call to ensure that AI develops responsibly in the field of protein design. We will need both standards for development and requirements for implementing risk assessments, as well as public-private sector collaboration in creating a robust testing economy.

By now, most of us have probably eaten, been treated to, or used a product created with biotechnology. Soon, technology will disrupt every industry and fundamentally reshape our normal lives: new fertility treatments will transform parenthood; cellular reprogramming could begin to reverse the aging process; biocomputing will power the computers of tomorrow. Standing on the cusp of these innovations, we as a country have a unique opportunity to drive the development of biotechnology, realize its immense benefits, and shape the standards for responsible innovation – before other countries move forward.