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AI can fuel biological weapons. We must harness its power for defense | Annie Jacobsen
Writing in the Guardian, Annie Jacobsen argues that artificial intelligence is simultaneously making it easier to create biological weapons and offering powerful new tools to defend public health, creating an urgent race between offensive misuse and defensive innovation. She warns that AI systems can now help malicious actors navigate complex biological knowledge, troubleshoot lab techniques and design experiments that once required years of specialist training, meaning the threat is no longer hypothetical. The core challenge, she says, is whether public health authorities can deploy AI defensively as quickly as bad actors exploit it offensively.
On the defensive side, Jacobsen highlights the World Health Organization's use of AI-driven surveillance, particularly a system called Eios (Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources), based at the WHO's Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin. Unlike traditional epidemic tracking, which relies on official case data that can take days or weeks to compile, Eios scans millions of websites, social media posts and local news reports in multiple languages to detect outbreak signals in real time. Jacobsen argues that this speed is critical, since early detection of the first few cases can be the difference between containing an outbreak and facing a full-blown epidemic or pandemic, and she stresses that laws and safeguards must keep pace with rapidly advancing biological engineering technology.
In short
- AI can both enable bioweapon creation and strengthen disease outbreak detection.
- WHO's Eios system uses AI to spot outbreaks via real-time online data.
- Author warns safeguards must advance as fast as AI-driven biological design.
Steelman: both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
AI-powered disease surveillance offers unprecedented speed in detecting outbreaks in real time, potentially preventing pandemics that could kill millions. Given that malicious actors can now use AI to dramatically compress the timeline for developing biological weapons, deploying advanced defensive systems is not optional but urgent. The asymmetry is acute: without matching defensive innovation, public health authorities will inevitably fall behind, with catastrophic consequences.
The case against
The defensive surveillance arms race is ultimately unwinnable and diverts resources from more effective prevention: international bioweapons treaties, strict biosafety governance, and responsible research policies that address the problem at source. Moreover, the pervasive surveillance systems required for such defence pose grave civil liberties risks and could enable authoritarian abuse, potentially inflicting harm equivalent to the biological threats they purport to prevent.
Explained simply
Artificial intelligence has a dual nature in the context of biological threats. It can help malicious actors create dangerous biological weapons more easily than before, yet it also offers public health authorities new defensive tools to spot and respond to outbreaks faster than ever. This creates an urgent race between offensive misuse and defensive innovation.
Creating biological weapons once required years of specialist training and deep scientific knowledge. Artificial intelligence is changing this by helping non-experts navigate complex biological information and laboratory techniques that were previously too difficult to access without formal training. The biological threat landscape is therefore shifting from theoretical to practical.
Public health organisations are now using AI systems to detect disease outbreaks in real time, scanning news reports, social media and websites across multiple languages for early warning signs. These systems are significantly faster than traditional methods, which rely on official case reports that can take days or weeks to compile. For outbreak response, speed is critical: detecting the first few cases can determine whether a disease is contained or becomes a pandemic.
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