You don’t have to be an AI fan to acknowledge that AI can at times be a useful tool in the search for new knowledge. If any of that new knowledge should happen to be a bioweapon recipe, I think most people can agree that would suck.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei don’t agree about much, but they agree that that would suck, and they signed their names to an open letter saying so. The letter itself calls this “a rare moment of agreement across stakeholders that are often at odds.”
Other letter-signers include Demis Hassabis and Alexandr Wang, respectively the AI heads at Google Deepmind and Meta, along with other AI businesspeople and researchers, plus dozens of scientists and policy experts.
The central thrust of the letter actually has nothing to do with AI; it’s directed at policymakers, and simply asks that legislation be passed requiring those with the ability to gatekeep synthetic nucleic acid to do so. Specifically, it asks that when requests come in for DNA (and probably RNA, although the letter doesn’t mention it), they be scanned for “sequences of concern,” and that “customer legitimacy” be checked before synthesized nucleic acid gets mailed out. It also asks that data about orders be recorded and potentially made available to investigators, claiming, “Awareness of traceability itself deters misuse.”
AI’s rapid development just adds urgency. The letter says that because AI is progressing so quickly, “there is a real possibility that the knowledge barriers which have historically prevented bad actors from obtaining biological weapons will meaningfully erode.”
Wired notes that the letter was organized by two think tanks: the Institute for Progress, which is described as nonpartisan, and the Foundation for American Innovation, which is apparently right-leaning.
OpenAI, for its part, has taken steps lately that seem aimed at associating the company and its leader with responsibility. It released a policy white paper Tuesday, outlining a plan for the vetting of AI models at the federal level that is more stringent than the plan in a recent executive order from President Trump. On Wednesday, Altman also met with Bernie Sanders, the fiercest critic of AI currently in the U.S. Senate.