LLMs and biorisk

This post details Anthropic's ongoing efforts to address biorisk associated with AI models. It expands on the ASL-3 protections activated for Claude Opus 4, specifically concerning biological weapons development. The post highlights the striking prioritization of biorisk across frontier AI labs, despite LLMs being generalists. It discusses the dual-use nature of AI, comparing its potential misuse to historical information technologies while emphasizing AI's unique capability to act as a true assistant. The post presents evidence of LLMs nearing or exceeding expert human performance in biological knowledge and outlines controlled trials demonstrating AI's superior assistance in planning hypothetical bioweapons acquisition. It also details preliminary and ongoing wet lab studies, co-sponsored with the Frontier Model Forum and Sentinel Bio, to investigate AI uplift in real laboratory tasks and the role of tacit knowledge.