An international security conference explored how artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for drug discovery could be misused for de novo design of biochemical weapons. A thought experiment evolved into a computational proof.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Spiez Convergence Conference https://www.spiezlab.admin.ch/en/home/meta/refconvergence.html (2021).
Urbina, F., Lowden, C. T., Culberson, J. C. & Ekins, S. https://doi.org/10.33774/chemrxiv-2021-nlwvs (2021).
Mansouri, K. et al. Environ. Health Perspect. 129, 047013 (2021).
Blaschke, T. et al. J. Chem. Inf. Model. 60, 5918–5922 (2020).
National Research Council Committee on Toxicology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK233724/ (National Academies Press, 1997).
Aroniadou-Anderjaska, V., Apland, J. P., Figueiredo, T. H., De Araujo Furtado, M. & Braga, M. F. Neuropharmacology 181, 108298 (2020).
Genheden, S. et al. J. Cheminform. 12, 70 (2020).
Coley, C. W. et al. Science 365, eaax1566 (2019).
Dix, D. J. et al. Toxicol. Sci. 95, 5–12 (2007).
Hutson, M. The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/who-should-stop-unethical-ai (2021).
Brown, T. B. et al. Preprint at arXiv https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165 (2020).
Prunkl, C. E. A. et al. Nat. Mach. Intell. 3, 104–110 (2021).
Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The Hague Ethical Guidelines https://www.opcw.org/hague-ethical-guidelines (2021).
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the organizers and participants of the Spiez Convergence conference 2021 for their feedback and questions. C.I. contributed to this article in his personal capacity. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors only and do not necessarily represent the position or opinion of Spiez Laboratory or the Swiss Government. We kindly acknowledge US National Institutes of Health funding under grant R44GM122196-02A1 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and 1R43ES031038-01 and 1R43ES033855-01 from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for our machine learning software development and applications. Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grants R43ES031038 and 1R43ES033855-01. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
F.U. and S.E. work for Collaborations Pharmaceuticals, Inc. F.L. and C.I. have no conflicts of interest.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Machine Intelligence thanks Gisbert Schneider and Carina Prunkl for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Urbina, F., Lentzos, F., Invernizzi, C. et al. Dual use of artificial-intelligence-powered drug discovery. Nat Mach Intell 4, 189–191 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-022-00465-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-022-00465-9
- Springer Nature Limited
This article is cited by
-
Security challenges by AI-assisted protein design
EMBO Reports (2024)
-
How to design an AI ethics board
AI and Ethics (2024)
-
An efficient feature selection and classification system for microarray cancer data using genetic algorithm and deep belief networks
Multimedia Tools and Applications (2024)
-
The Age of the Intelligent Machine: Singularity, Efficiency, and Existential Peril
Philosophy & Technology (2024)
-
Paths to cheminformatics: Q&A with Ann M. Richard
Journal of Cheminformatics (2023)