In progress
Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled tools are accelerating advances in biotechnology, offering powerful new capabilities for medical countermeasure (MCM) development. These technologies can expand the bioeconomy, strengthen global leadership in standards and innovation, and dramatically improve the speed, accuracy, and scalability of systems that detect, predict, and respond to biological threats, while also introducing new risks for misuse. The National Academies and National Academy of Medicine will conduct an international workshop and consensus study to examine the challenge of responding to unique biological threats designed using AI-enabled tools, opportunities to accelerate MCM against AI-enabled threats, and strategies for reducing associated risks.
Description
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, in collaboration with the National Academy of Medicine, will convene an ad hoc committee to examine how to strengthen preparedness and mitigation strategies for anticipating and countering novel biological threat agents enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) models and other emerging technologies. Building on prior National Academies work at the intersection of AI and biology, the committee will focus on improving medical countermeasure (MCM) research and development. The committee will:
- Characterize current and emerging AI models and biotechnologies and assess plausible future trends that may reshape the biosecurity risk landscape or challenge existing MCM development pathways.
- Identify opportunities to responsibly leverage AI models (e.g., AI-enabled biological tools, large language models, knowledge-guided machine learning) to strengthen and streamline MCM design and development, including rapidly adaptable approaches for both natural and intentional, AI-enabled biological threats.
- Recommend actionable strategies to manage and mitigate biosecurity risks associated with AI models, biological data, and MCM development workflows, including guidance for developers on preventing misuse and circumventing guardrails.
- Evaluate challenges associated with multi-use technologies, including roles, responsibilities, and gaps in oversight, and assess how governance structures can better support responsible science and innovation across the MCM ecosystem.
The committee will produce a report with actionable scientific, policy, and operational recommendations for MCM R&D funders and developers. One or more workshops will inform the study, with proceedings of a workshop-in brief.
Meetings
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Comment on Provisional Committee Appointments
Viewers may communicate with the National Academies at any time over the project's duration. In addition, formal comments on the provisional appointments to a committee of the National Academies are solicited during the 20-calendar day period following the posting of the membership and, as described below, these comments will be considered before committee membership is finalized. We welcome your comments (Use the Feedback link below). Please note that the appointments made to this committee are provisional, and changes may be made. No appointment shall be considered final until we have evaluated relevant information bearing on the committee's composition and balance. This information will include the confidential written disclosures to The National Academies by each member-designate concerning potential sources of bias and conflict of interest pertaining to his or her service on the committee; information from discussion of the committee's composition and balance that is conducted in closed session at its first event and again whenever its membership changes; and any public comments that we have received on the membership during the 20-calendar day formal public comment period. If additional members are appointed to this committee, an additional 20-calendar day formal public comment period will be allowed. It is through this process that we determine whether the committee contains the requisite expertise to address its task and whether the points of views of individual members are adequately balanced such that the committee as a whole can address its charge objectively.
Sponsors
CEPI
Staff
Lyly Luhachack
Lead
Kavita Berger
Lead
Melissa Laitner
Sabina Vadnais
Lisa Brown
Thomasina Lyles
Mitchell Hebner
Major units and sub-units
Center for Health, People, and Places
Lead
National Academy of Medicine
Collaborator
Biomedical and Health Sciences Program Area
Collaborator
Life Sciences and Biotechnology Program Area
Lead
