The title is misleading. It wasn’t an LLM, but a bespoke, dedicated system.
And yes, I know that’s sort of “AI,” but these days when that word is used, the average person equates it to ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever text chatbot they’re familiar with.
This basically has nothing to do with that. Scientists have been making models for design and data synthesis forever.
It was an LLM trained on mountains of research.
I don’t think so. I don’t have access to the research, but almost assuredly it is a custom neural network for specifically things like this. An LLM would never be able to describe in detail the virus to a point that researchers would be able to fabricate it. That’s just not how that works.
You don’t understand. This isn’t a debate. They used Evo1 and Evo2 which are both LLMs. That is just a fact. You don’t understand what LLMs are. I’m not trying to be mean or rude, it’s simply true if you think an LLM couldn’t do this, because it literally did.
Edit: sorry, that probably came of extremely rude and short tempered, and I shouldn’t treat you that way.
LLMs are not only chat-bots, and in fact so not even need to “speak” any language you or I would recognize. Evo 1 & 2 are LLMs built off of raw genomic data. Literally the raw A, C, G, T pattern of the genetic code itself. Trillions of nucleotides. So the output of the LLM wasn’t “Here’s what a bacteriophage would look like!” It was “AT,CG,AG…” Raw genetic code which can then be synthesized.
That thing looks like it’s a 'billion" residues long. Granted I have only rudimentary understanding of proteins, as I did my master years ago on thermodynamics, but using enzymes as the system.
How can you be sure anything in there will fold correctly. That you can design and describe a synthetic virus that in theory will work, but actually making it?
Edit: Ah, normal GMO, just used the models to tell them what to modify. Not a complete synthetic virus. Probably just did some normal injection of new lines in existing viruses.
Okay so, am I crazy here or does that mean it’s just a machine learning neural network. Which is what LLMs are, but LLMs are specifically designed for language. That’s their whole purpose. If this was not designed for language isn’t it by definition not a LLM.
Yes, language – a LLM trained only on English writing will have zero ability to respond to a question in Spanish. These LLM are trained in the language of genetics (e.g. ACTG).
It’s like putting an internal combustion engine in a car or a boat. One navigates land and the other water, but the engine can actually just be the same one.
You’re mixing up colloquial usage with scientific usage. Scientists are notoriously bad at giving things names (thanks dark matter…) All LLMs are neural networks. All neural networks are AI. Not all AI are neural networks. Not all neural networks are LLMs. This is a case of nested hierarchies, like phylogenetic taxonomies. You are a bony fish.
So yes, LLMs are literally just a form of neural networks, but the language they learn on does not have to specifically be English, or German. And this “Language” was genetic code. So Evo1 and Evo2 Literally speak genetic code. That is their language, since it is what they were trained on. They are predictive text models that can predict what the next genetic sequence will/should be.
Technically, not misleading. It’s that LLMs are not AI. The world is misleading! Title is actuate!
AI is a massive umbrella, under which LLMs are categorized.
That’s objectively false. LLMs are neural networks, which is a form of AI.
Don’t fucking post images of headlines.
Find a source that isn’t paywalled and link to the article. Or don’t post anything at all.
Or fuck off? Like is it harder to read in a picture? Want me to clean your screen, wipe your ass too?
People who aren’t illiterate actually read articles. You post the information about the article so that people know if they want to read it or not. Then we discuss the contents of the article with other assholes who also read the article.
Because discussing with others who have also only read the blurb is fucking useless because nobody knows a fucking thing.
Posting the article link both makes it easy to facilitate this while also maintaining the polite fiction that the other dumbasses could have at least in theory read the article.
You are posting here but you have no fucking idea what the fucking point of such forums is because you are an illiterate child and then you have the nerve to get angry. You don’t have to provide a link… you don’t have to make a post either you could leave that task to the actual adults.
Also the culture of posting such pictures results in trivial fakes blending in because idiots judge the veracity of the source pictured without any way to authenticate unlike a fucking url.
🥇gold
Please have my child
Pictures are not reliable sources for information. It promotes a culture of disinformation.
And blind people can’t read words in images.
There, a link to the source of the picture… https://bsky.app/profile/financialtimes.com/post/3msgnagdoh72l you can now bathe in more pixels
Site doesn’t load
Yeah fuck people who use screen readers and/or are broke hahaha what losers.
/s in case it’s needed
Nah, you dont even whip the shit off your own chin after eating all that
Umbrella Corporation is coming along nicely, I guess?
Pretty soon it’ll be like “The Stand”.
Why the fuck would they give it that ability? Oh right, to kill people. Thanks US government.
It’s a bacteriophage, a proposed replacement for antibiotics. It cannot hurt you, it is meant to save your life in the future.
Lmao.
And you think the country responsible for untold death and destruction, that’s lead by war criminal pedophile rapists, isn’t working on super viruses secretly as well?
I didn’t say that. I said THIS research is specifically good because it is set to replace antibiotics, which have a well-known expiration date. I can celebrate medical advances without condoning governments that may use the discoveries for evil. Are you of the position that any technology with the capacity to harm should be banned? Or, what is the alternative research method you’re proposing?
My proposal is sanctioning America out of existence, forced disarmament, and balkanization. You cannot be trusted, as history shows again and again.
You? Do you think I’m an American?
They*
Fair.
Would this identical research be acceptable then, had it come from a different nation?
Ehh this is a milestone. If you can engineer a virus you can also engineer a cure.
This virus IS the cure. You need to look up what a bacteriophage is. It physically cannot infect you the same way HIV or any other virus you know of does.
Was actually thinking the same lol
We wouldn’t have to engineer a cure if we didn’t engineer the T-Virus to begin with.
This virus IS a cure for bacterial infections. It is a proposed replacement for antibiotics, which have been steadily reducing in effectiveness over the years, and will likely stop working entirely in the future. This is a way to prevent you and I from being killed by staph infections again.
Not really though, a virus is just a vector for introducing a message into a living cell so a virus CAN be a cure in and of itself. I would also bet that the “AI” they used is actually just a ML algorithm but the internet needed clicks so they slapped “AI” on it.
It was actually a LLM trained on very specific data. In this case, bacteriophage research. LLMs are not just chatbots.
Refusing to engage with the technology just guarantees that when someone else inevitably engineers a virus you’ll be unable to do anything about it
This is a really good piece of news because it shows that you can do something meaningful, that benefits humanity, with AI.
These viri have been created to combat certain diseases using and building upon scientific knowledge already out there in the public domain.
Medicine is going to evolve at an astounding rate.
I do not think we need to build more DCs though.
Great, so we’re gonna keep the Boomers alive for longer. I can’t wait until our governments are run by 110 year olds.
Wow talk about negative outlook. I hope you do something meaningful with your life.
I already have and consistently do.
Keeping older people suffering longer is not a good thing. I’m all for medical advancements to keep a 5yo from dying of cancer, but we don’t need to keep someone who can barely walk and get around on their own in their 90s alive for another 30 years. It’s a drain on medical resources, tax revenue, social programs, etc. What does a 110yo person contribute to society as a whole? Nothing.
I’m 39 years old. I do not want to live to be 110 and feel like a drain on not only society but my family. Once I get to the point in life I can no longer piss without a family member helping me to the bathroom, just push my ass off the balcony.
Negative outlook
👍
This isn’t meant to keep people alive for longer than we currently do, this is an attempt to replace antibiotics, which have a very real and well understood effectiveness period that we are nearing the end of.
When I’m old and falling apart, I’d rather have a humane assisted suicide option be socially acceptable instead of an excruciating death by random chance. The rich and powerful are always going to live longer but maybe less at risk populations (read: poor, minority, children) will die from negligence
Or 3d print the agent of the next pandemic.
We’re getting Lucifer Alpha before GTA 6. The future is stupid!
This is a proposed replacement for antibiotics, it cannot hurt. Your body contains more bacteriophages than human cells and bacteria combined.
Everyone kept enjoying dystopian media they thought they’d bring it into real life
oh the progress
Pray for NUKES 💥
Make one that gives everyone alpha-gal syndrome.
Oh cool, wait no, this is probubbly bad actually.
No, it isn’t. This isn’t a virus that can hurt you, it’s a virus that PHYSICALLY cannot infect anything other than bacteria. It is a proposed replacement for antibiotics, which will lose their effectiveness in the near future.
Unless you want the majority of humans to be killed by bacterial infections again, like we did pre-penicillin.
Or have a suggestion for a way to kill bacteria that doesn’t use modern antibiotics.
That’s called a cognitohazard. An infohazard. Just that knowledge existing is dangerous.
Just wait until we get 3D biological printers that can print protein chains at home.
If we make it there. The fire tornadoes say that maybe climate apocalypse has it first. Though nuclear might take the winner since the US has a pedophile manbaby in office that can never admit defeat currently engaged in a lost war.
Just wait until we get 3D biological printers that can print protein chains at home.
If we make it there. The fire tornadoes say that maybe climate apocalypse has it first. Though nuclear might take the winner since the US has a pedophile manbaby in office that can never admit defeat currently engaged in a lost war.
https://i.imgur.com/KsHHnyu.png
No. I don’t want to make it there. I’ll take the fallout fed fire tornado, please and thank you. Better the fiery instant death than the other carnival of horrors possibility.
Hell, I think it may be a moral imperative to ensure the first place to fuck around with that at anything beneath BSL3/P3 be nuked from orbit. Less harm potential for life itself that way.
Really? I remember listening to about this years ago on radiolab?
Or maybe that was bacteria. Some kind of anthrax like bioweapon
I’m guessing it created it the same way i created a giant eight limbed creature called an Octophant, using a piece of paper and a pencil.
It does not make it exist.
According to this non-paywalled article, it created thousands of potential genomes from which the scientists running the experiment chose three hundred promising candidates. They then had bacteria make those and used them for their bacteriophagy experiment. So essentially the AI made the blueprints that the scientists then turned into real stuff.
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.
So the AI’s role in this process, which is already known and well-practiced,
Uh… no? Creating custom-made genomes for curing specific diseases isn’t “known and well-practiced;” it’s an area of active research.
from which scientists had to discard ~90% of what the AI generated before moving on to the next step.
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.
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.
Let’s get real here. Could the bacteria make my Octophant if I clean up the pencil lines?!
Cat girls first dangit! Get in line.
Unfortunately the science hasn’t gotten that far yet, but maybe in the future.
Same question to you, why would you do this?
Consider the military and industrial applications of the octophant.
[You Have Been Reported to the Raytheon Ethics Board]
Oh boy a promotion!
[All Clear. Proceed]
[Congratulations on your Sydney gottlieb ethics in STEM award! The bonus should show up in your account by Monday!]
Same answer: The hubris of man.
A version of this came out of a DND campaign. They’re called octen. Like oxen, but octen. They’re like regular oxen, except they have eight legs. The legs have the same fur and color as cattle legs, but then bend up and move like a tarantula’s.
Yes and no. Going from a design to production takes remarkably little time these days.
So you just scan his picture of an octophant and print it out and it exists? I’d bet you have a bunch of meat and no life. That said, please spend the time and effort into something more productive instead of a octophant was the point
That said, please spend the time and effort into something more productive
Like curing antibiotic-resistant bacterial diseases? Because that’s what the experiment was for.
An octophant is a bacterial disease? Lol
And yes this experiment may be an absolutely stupid thing to do. Could it work out in a extremely well regulated extremely tight secure facility, sure.
Is that happening, not in the U.S., we are cutting all the regulations and health precautions, so if what they create ever kills good bacteria as well during the tests, you should assume it will be spreading to the population.
Why wasn’t it contained? Our research grants were cut in half so we skipped on the precautions. Also the regulatory board no longer exists, and our OSHA equivalent hasn’t stopped by in over 2 years. I think they may have shut down
Yes and no. Going from a design to production takes remarkably little time these days.
Are there commercial virus-printing services? If so, what keeps some yahoo from sending them the virus-equivalent of a .stl file for smallpox? Can someone just order virulent pathogens printed on command?
