In a MedPage Today opinion piece, virologist James Alwine acknowledges that AI can design novel viruses, citing a recent Science study that used AI to create bacteriophages. He argues that this capability warrants serious attention and that scientific societies should quickly develop guidelines and safeguards, similar to the moratorium and Asilomar Conference that governed recombinant DNA research in the 1970s.
However, Alwine contends that the threat from AI-generated viruses pales in comparison to what nature already does. Producing a functional virus from AI designs requires extensive laboratory work and yields only a few viable agents, whereas nature continuously generates new viruses through zoonotic transmission from animals to humans. He notes that in the past 108 years, at least 10 animal-derived viral pandemics or epidemics have occurred, claiming over 100 million lives.
The author emphasizes that natural viruses evolve rapidly through random mutation and selection, making them far more adept at creating dangerous variants than any computer. He warns that federal leaders are not preparing for the inevitable next zoonotic pandemic and are not monitoring emerging viruses in the wild. Field research, habitat change awareness, and surveillance of wet markets and wildlife trade are essential, he says, to prevent the next outbreak.