Anthropic Report Says It Blocked Potential Misuses Of AI To Make Bio Weapons [Op-Ed]

Two days after insiders at AI research and products corporation Anthropic took to social media to sound the alarm on artificial intelligence technology advancing fast, being handled irresponsibly, and threatening to “kill all humans” within the next decade or so, Anthropic has released a new report, saying that in this year alone, it had disrupted several potential plots by scientists to use its leading AI models to conduct research that could have helped develop biological weapons.

According to the New York Times, in a report describing misuses of its AI models, Anthropic claimed it had halted projects and research by scientists simply because it could not determine whether the research served a legitimate, beneficial purpose to mankind, such as the biological research that leads to vaccine breakthroughs, or whether the research was for the engineering of dangerous pathogens, or something else doomsday-related sci-fi films have been warning us about for generations.

From the Times:

“You are not seeing someone in a comic book kind of way say, ‘Hey, I want to build a biological weapon to kill everybody,’” Jacob Klein, the head of threat intelligence at Anthropic, said in an interview. “It’s an incredibly nuanced situation.”

The potential for cutting-edge A.I. models to facilitate the development of known or entirely new biological pathogens is among the gravest concerns experts have about a technology that is developing so rapidly that even its leading architects doubt whether humans will be able to fully control it.

Compared with the threat of catastrophic cyberattacks or A.I. agents that fail to align with human intentions, biological misuse has gained less attention as an existential risk of A.I., in part because past examples have generally been shown only in research settings rather than in the real world.

Andrew Weber, a senior fellow on the Council on Strategic Risks who reviewed Anthropic’s report before its release, said the findings were “chilling examples of state-sponsored biological weapons developers tapping into the rapidly advancing capabilities” of leading A.I. models.

Again, all of this comes just days after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon announced via X that he was leaving the company because he “spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic,” and learned that “neither company is acting responsibly,” but are instead “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.” Then two more experts from Anthropic piled on, cosigning the whistle Coxon blew.

Whether Thursday’s Anthropic report was released in response to its insiders appearing to say the quiet part really loudly, or it was just a standard disclosure, it’s a cause for concern on top of a litany of causes for concern that educators, environmental scientists and others have been raising for the last handful of years.

Susan Monarez, a microbiologist and public health expert who oversaw a review of national biosecurity preparedness in the Obama administration, reviewed Anthropic’s report and said the findings provided real-world evidence to support concerns that bad actors — including researchers for foreign governments —were trying in secret to use advanced A.I. “to improve their chances of building biological pathogens that could cause significant harm.” Former CDC director Dr. Monarez said it could “let bad actors hide in plain sight, using seemingly legitimate research to create pathogens we may not see coming and may not be able to stop once released.”

It’s getting scary out here, folks. When the developers of AI are consistently warning us of the dangers of AI, maybe it’s time for the world to take a step back and consider whether we’re working in the interest of human betterment — or at least human survival.

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