Tech executives have long touted the potential for their AI models to accelerate the pace of biology discoveries
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In a September 23 announcement, Anthropic claimed that its large language model Claude had identified an enzyme system with properties “reminiscent of Crispr,” the Nobel Prize-winning gene-editing tool.
Key facts
- According to Anthropic, about 950 Claude agents running simultaneously found the interesting genetic sequences in 21.5 hours
- The PR is already live,” says Le Cong, a professor at Stanford University focused on integrating AI into genome engineering research
- In a September 23 announcement, Anthropic claimed that its large language model Claude had identified an enzyme system with properties “reminiscent of Crispr,” the Nobel Prize-winning gene-editing
- Seth Shipman, associate investigator at the Gladstone Institutes, doesn’t think what Anthropic found is a new Crispr system, but says the discovery is still interesting
Summary
Tech executives have long touted the potential for their AI models to accelerate the pace of biology discoveries. According to Anthropic, about 950 Claude agents running simultaneously found the interesting genetic sequences in 21.5 hours. Other scientists are less enthusiastic about the finding, which is the first to come out of a research group formed by Anthropic earlier this year. Anthropic, which has set up a wet lab for drug discovery, has been clear that the finding isn’t the end of its work. (“We don’t yet understand what this system does,” the company said in an X post, “but only a handful of known systems share its features, and all of them are able to cut, copy, and paste DNA.”) One physical experiment was included in a technical report, which has not been peer-reviewed. “Let's say we are on Santa Monica Beach and trying to scan through all the sand to find a diamond,” Cong says.