Artificial intelligence models are on track to become capable enough to master biology, a development that could offer major scientific benefits while also creating serious safety risks, according to Vinces Yao Shunyu, Tencent Holdings’ chief AI scientist and a former OpenAI researcher.
The assessment comes as frontier AI systems are increasingly being applied to medicine and biology, potentially accelerate discovery of new drugs and other treatments. Experts also warn that malicious actors could use AI to produce bioweapons or potentially spark a new pandemic, especially if such capabilities are released as open-weight software.
“The cyber abilities of [AI] models and soon [the] bio ability of models will reach a threshold where it’s actually possible to do harm,” Yao said at a science symposium co-hosted by the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences and the Future Science Prize.
