According to a Bloomberg report on the 12th, the UK government is preparing to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in gene synthesis. As officials’ concerns over biosafety risks deepen, the UK government believes that without effective global regulation, AI could lower the barrier to creating biological weapons.
People familiar with the matter said that the UK government is studying multiple safeguards to prevent terrorists, other malicious actors, or negligent researchers from using gene synthesis to create synthetic DNA.
The measures under consideration include enacting new biological weapons legislation. One option is to amend existing laws and establish a gene-synthesis screening system. Laboratories would need to verify whether customers are legitimate users and notify the relevant authorities if they detect anything unusual, such as a request to synthesize a DNA sequence that could raise security concerns.
The UK government is also studying whether, and to what extent, it should intervene in cooperation between AI companies and academic institutions. Some academic institutions are reportedly conducting specialized research into genome sequencing and possess large amounts of genome-sequencing data.
This threat is global in nature, so unilateral regulation by the UK would have limited effectiveness. For the measures to work in practice, they would also need to be coordinated with other major gene-synthesis centers around the world.
ITHome understands that the UK proposed its regulatory plan as the technology and scientific communities have repeatedly warned in recent months about the biosafety risks AI may bring. Government officials are also increasingly concerned that malicious groups or individuals could ask AI models to write gene sequences and then use those sequences to create dangerous pathogens.
A UK government spokesperson said: “We are closely monitoring the risks posed by emerging technologies and are continually assessing whether further measures are needed. To protect public safety, we will take all necessary action.”
The UK’s AI regulatory policies are more lenient than those of the European Union, while it remains at the forefront of technology safety research. In 2023, the UK established the AI Safety Institute to assess the safety of frontier models. Results released by the institute last week showed that AI models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic carried out “unauthorized” actions during safety tests, such as attempting to break into websites and inject malicious code into software.
New UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham adopted a tougher stance toward AI during his first few weeks in office, repeatedly warning in particular about AI’s impact on employment and young people. He decided to abolish the government’s technology department while promoting AI Minister Kanishka Narayan to the Cabinet.
A UK government spokesperson said: “Gene synthesis is delivering significant value for medicine, food, and clean energy, but protecting national security will always be the highest priority. The UK is the second country in the world to publish guidance and screen who can purchase synthetic DNA and the DNA sequences they order. But we will not stop there.”