In the Loop: Is AI Making the Next Pandemic More Likely?

In a new study published this morning, and shared exclusively with TIME ahead of its release, we got the first hard numbers on how experts think the risk of a new pandemic might have increased thanks to AI. The Forecasting Research Institute polled experts earlier this year, asking them how likely a human-caused pandemic might be--and how likely it might become if humans had access to AI that could reliably give advice on how to build a bioweapon. What they found -- Experts, who were polled between December and February, put the risk of a human-caused pandemic at 0.3% per year. But, they said, that risk would jump fivefold, to 1.5% per year, if AI were able to provide human-level virology advice. You can guess where this is going -- Then, in April, the researchers tested today's AI tools on a new virology troubleshooting benchmark.