950 Claude agents, 21 hours, 210M tokens: Anthropic's lab discovers a never-before-recorded enzyme system
新智元 · wechat · 2026-09-24
Anthropic's molecular biology lab unveiled its first result: 950 Claude agents ran for 21 hours, consuming 210M tokens, scanning over 200,000 reverse transcriptases and 3,500 candidates to autonomously discover a previously unrecorded enzyme system in jumbophage DNA, named ART (Array-associated Reverse Transcriptase system), with humans handling experimental validation.
- ART resembles CRISPR structurally: a reverse transcriptase, a companion gene, and a long array of regularly spaced DNA repeats; early experiments show the array expresses distinct short RNAs, with its mechanism still under study.
- The division of labor: AI expands the search, generates hypotheses and reports; scientists judge evidence and run all wet-lab experiments. Dario said he'd be proud for life if this were his PhD work.
- It aligns with Dario's Machines of Loving Grace prediction that AI could help cure most diseases within 5-10 years.
More from AGI Musings
- Cory Doctorow on the 'Big AI Lie': Can't Build Sandboxes, Claims You Built God — AlexTensor · 2026-09-24
- DHH says hand-writing code is over as Pragmatic Engineer unpaywalls AI coding mega-trend piece — IgorCarron · 2026-09-24
- Jensen Huang says uncontrolled labs should shut down; Gary Marcus calls to pause OpenAI — Gary Marcus · 2026-09-24
- NYU Prof Questions AI-Slop Panic: AI Reviewers Rarely Accept Papers — ipeirotis · 2026-09-24
- Nick Clegg slammed for saying AI "can't even read a PDF" while pushing end of remote work — dioscuri · 2026-09-24
- Richard Susskind publishes The Future of Law: Reflections and Predictions via OUP — carlbfrey · 2026-09-24