AI Is Moving Beyond Chatbots. The DNA file had been gathering dust in Pietro Schirano's computer for years. Then, earlier this month, he gave it to Claude Code--an "agentic coding tool" developed by Anthropic--for analysis. "I'm attaching my raw DNA file from Ancestry DNA," he told the tool. The AI spawned copies of itself on Schirano's computer, each one simulating an expert in a different part of the genome--one expert on cardiovascular disease, another on aging, a third on autoimmune disease.

Pietro Schirano adds, "To me, it seemed like magic." "I was slightly frightened since it was so wonderful." He is discussing the most recent iteration of the ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) technology. You type anything, and the system generates a response for you. The responses are eerily human, amiable, and intelligent.