Ginkgo Bioworks CEO Jason Kelly addresses AI safety concerns regarding malicious actors using biological foundation models to synthesize lethal pathogens.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Kelly: AI will outperform humans in biology faster than in English
“And so I feel like these computer brains are going to kick our ass a lot faster in this domain than they do in English.”
Disclosure
Kelly: Ginkgo gives 10x super-voting shares to all active employees
“At Ginkgo, we took this Silicon Valley idea of founder super voting shares and extended it to the entire employee base. So it's not just us, anyone who's at the company, and it goes away if you leave, ah, gets 10 X voting for their B shares versus the A shares…”
Insight
Kelly: Neural Network Analysis Will Function Like Systems Biology
“Like you're about to experience, like the analysis of these neural nets is going to look like systems biology, right? It's going to be like, go in and like, try to back, figure out a thing that you didn't design, my friends.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kelly: Major biotech and pharma companies remain fully vertically integrated
“Where's the fast platforms? Like, where's all the horizontal stuff? Where's the operating systems? And it's like nowhere, like vertical integration, Merck, Pfizer, Bayer, Syngenta, like every one of these companies is like its own tech stack top to bottom, you…”
Insight
Kelly: Biological AI's main bottleneck is availability of training data
“The big limitation in bio is the availability of data to train these things, right? And so you have this tough situation where, like, everyone is doing these models of training on the same data, right?”
Insight
Kelly: Biosecurity should mirror cybersecurity with persistent monitoring and rapid response
“Cybersecurity, I think is a bit the mental model for like what the future of infectious disease response looks like. Persistent monitoring, rapid response, kill it.”