Anthropic has a wet biology lab in the Bay Area where it can perform physics experiments using AI models, it confirmed to TechCrunch.
AI leaders have promised that AI is the key to curing human diseases. Just last week, Dario Amodei said, “I believe that AI will be able to treat most major diseases within the next five to 10 years.” To do this, the LLM must have a way to test its theories in reality.
Eric Kauderer-Abrams, head of life sciences at Anthropic, told Reuters: “We believe that real lab work is the final test in studying biology, and will continue to be for some time to come.” “We’re definitely doing that today,” he said, adding that the lab operates like most biotech labs. Anthropic added that it is conducting some research there, working with external partners.
This news probably isn’t shocking. Anthropic acquired stealth AI biotech Coefficient Bio in April.
Anthropic declined to say specifically what kind of research the wet lab is working on, but said its primary focus is basic biology, not drug discovery.
Anthropic doesn’t want to appear to be competing with the pharmaceutical industry, where it has many major customers and partners (for example, it just announced a deal to work with Novo Nordisk on co-discovery). Anthropic has already faced backlash for launching products that appear to compete with customers’ products.
To that end, Anthropic this week also launched a life science validation program that gives vetted bioresearchers access to its most powerful models. We have also published recent reports on some of the research we are conducting to support drug discovery. This includes one report on accelerating protein design and one report on improving bimolecular modeling.
But the world is still reeling from the resignation of anthropologist Jacob Coxon, who warned that “the people developing AI seriously believe that AI could wipe out humanity by the end of this decade.” Anthropic’s own coordinated lead found that there is a greater than 10% chance that AI will wipe out humanity within the next 10 years.
The frenzy has become so intense that CEO Dario Amodei published a post over the weekend calling on the industry to slow down and introduce self-regulation. He has repeatedly said that bioterrorism is one of the biggest risks of AI.
The juxtaposition of these dire warnings and wet labs has gone unnoticed in the tech world. As Chamath Palihapitiya, an investor and founder of an AI coding startup, wrote in a rather sarcastic post on X: “The group behind hits like ‘We All Going to Die’ and ‘Regulate Me Now’ is building a wet lab in San Francisco. I don’t recommend this.”
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