As described in a recent Science paper, researchers successfully used AI to create sixteen useful bacteriophages.
But the same AI methods [used to create disease-fighting viruses] also lower the technical barrier to building other kinds of biological agents on demand, including viruses with the potential to cause disease, sharpening a long-standing worry that systems developed for medicine and biotechnology could be turned, without much modification, into biological weapons.
AI Can Now Design Functional Viruses. Should We Worry?, by Elie Dolgin.
Technology advances continue to provide double-edged swords.