Artificial intelligence models will soon be powerful enough to master biology, presenting both benefits and serious risks, Tencent Holdings’ chief AI scientist and former OpenAI star researcher Vinces Yao Shunyu said during a rare public appearance on Saturday.
The assessment comes as frontier AI systems are increasingly being applied to medicine and biology, which could accelerate discovery of new drugs and other treatments. However, experts also warn that malicious actors could use AI to produce bioweapons or potentially start the next pandemic, especially if they 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.
