Tech leaders have written an open letter to US lawmakers urging Congress to pass rules to address a worrying biosecurity gap that they say could trigger a global pandemic.
Tech leaders have written an open letter to US lawmakers urging Congress to pass rules to address a worrying biosecurity gap that they say could trigger a global pandemic.
Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Sam Altman of OpenAI, and Mustafa Suleiman of Microsoft are among those who have signed a petition to US lawmakers calling for companies that sell synthetic DNA and RNA — genetic material that can be ordered online and recreated in a lab — to screen orders for sequences that could be used to create dangerous pathogens, The Verge reports .
The main concern is that artificial intelligence tools can make it easier to develop potentially dangerous sequences, order them from manufacturers, and use them in a way that previously required much deeper specialized knowledge.
The appeal was joined by Meta's head of AI Alexander Wang and Demis Hassabis from Google DeepMind, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate for developing AI to predict protein structure.
The letter was signed by leading scientists, national security experts, and top managers of biotech companies Twist Bioscience and Ansa Biotechnologies, which specialize in the sale of synthetic genetic material.
According to sources, the initiative is being led by two think tanks — the Foundation for American Innovation and the Institute for Progress.
Scientists have long warned that advances in synthetic biology could make it easier to model dangerous organisms or even resurrect long-extinct pathogens, but such developments could have catastrophic consequences if misused, mishandled, or accidentally released.
