Anthropic says Claude found a new biological system in viruses
About 950 agents searched for 21 hours using 210 million tokens and found an overlooked repeating DNA structure, which Dario cites as early evidence AI could help cure most diseases in 5-10 years.
Dario Amodei still believes AI could “cure most diseases in 5-10 years,” and Anthropic’s latest discovery offers an early glimpse of the research he thinks could get us there. He calls that goal "barely possible", and only if AI is applied to every stage of the pipeline. Anthropic says Claude identified a previously overlooked biological system in viruses that infect bacteria. It noticed an unusual arrangement of repeating DNA beside a known enzyme, investigated the pattern, and proposed experiments for human scientists to carry out. "After 21 hours spent searching this data by roughly 950 agents using 210 million tokens, one of the agents spotted something remarkable: a repeating pattern of DNA sequences that occurs next to the gene for an odd-looking RT." Initial lab work showed that those repeats produce short RNA molecules. The arrangement resembles CRISPR, but its function and potential usefulness for gene editing remain unknown. The prospect of doing this repeatedly is exciting: AI searching enormous datasets, finding things scientists have missed, and helping decide what to test next. As Dario puts it: "The first step is showing that AI can first help with, and then drive, biological discoveries." I think the next big revolution will actually take place in biology. OpenAI and Anthropic were farsighted enough to focus on this early on. No one has the slightest idea what's still to come.
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