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AI creates first synthetic viruses
(lemmy.world)
Why go for the cures right?
Paywalled source
https://ft.trib.al/Uk6VCRG
So the AI's role in all this, given that creating new viruses in a lab is already understood and well-practiced, was just to generate a list of virus configuration options (presumably working from existing examples), from which scientists had to discard ~90% of what the AI generated before moving on to the next step.
Sounds like an attempt at a headline more than a genuine scientific effort.
Scientists had no clue at all how to design bacteriophages is my understanding. Only with the help of LLM have they been able to generate the first man-made bacteriophages ever.
Uh... no? Creating custom-made genomes for curing specific diseases isn't "known and well-practiced;" it's an area of active research.
That's basically in line with how AI is used in similar applications; even if most of what you get is busts AI can make so much stuff that it can compete with (or even outdo) other alternatives by sheer quantity. Sure someone has to filter out the useful stuff from the trash, but the very fact that it produces useful stuff makes it worth it. This method is well-established in other areas, so there's no reason to dismiss it here.