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Anthropic has a wet biology lab in the Bay Area where it can use its AI models to run physical experiments, it has confirmed to TechCrunch.<\/p>\n
AI leaders have been promising that AI is the key to curing human disease. Dario Amodei opined just last week: \u201cI believe that AI could cure most major diseases in the next 5\u201310 years.\u201d To do that, an LLM would have to have methods to test its theories in real life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that to do biology, the final test is still, and will be for a while, in real lab work,\u201d Anthropic\u2019s head of life sciences, Eric Kauderer-Abrams, told Reuters<\/a>. \u201cWe absolutely are doing that today.\u201d He added that the lab operates like most biotech labs: Anthropic conducts some research there while also working with external partners.<\/p>\n This news probably shouldn\u2019t be shocking. Anthropic bought Coefficient Bio, a stealth AI biotech<\/a>, in April.<\/p>\n While Anthropic declined to give specifics on what the wet lab is working on, it did say the main focus was fundamental biology, not drug discovery.<\/p>\n Anthropic doesn\u2019t want to give the appearance of competing with the pharma industry, where it has numerous major customers and partners (e.g., it just announced a deal to work with Novo Nordisk<\/a> on joint drug discovery). Anthropic has already faced backlash <\/a>for launching products perceived to compete with those of its customers.<\/p>\n To that end, Anthropic also launched a Life Sciences Verification Program this week, to give vetted bio researchers access<\/a> to its most powerful models. It has also published recent reports on some of the research it\u2019s doing to support drug discovery. This includes one report on accelerating protein design<\/a>\u00a0and one on\u00a0uplifting bimolecular modeling<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the world is still reeling from the resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who warned that \u201cthe people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade<\/a>.\u201d Anthropic\u2019s own alignment lead gave the odds at greater than 10%<\/a> that AI could exterminate humanity within the next decade.<\/p>\n The fervor has grown so intense that CEO Dario Amodei published a post last weekend calling on the industry to slow down and institute self-regulation. He has repeatedly called bioterrorism one of AI\u2019s biggest risks.<\/p>\n The juxtaposition of these dire warnings and the wet lab has not gone unnoticed in the tech industry. As investor and AI coding startup founder<\/a> Chamath Palihapitiya posted on X<\/a>, somewhat tongue in cheek: \u201cThe group behind such hits as: \u2018We\u2019re All Going To Die\u2019 and \u2018Regulate Me Now\u2019 are building a wet lab in SF. I do not recommend this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n