Import AI 475: Swarm scaling pays a 'stepping on toes' tax; DeepMind watermarks AI-made biology
Import AI (Jack Clark) · rss · 2026-10-05
This issue of Import AI covers: Toby Ord's swarm scaling analysis — agent swarms trade 2x tokens for half wall-clock time, but hit a 'stepping on toes' factor where 10x agents yield only 10λ (3-5x) gains, and the λ value raises rather than lowers intelligence-explosion odds. A CSAIP poll (n=2498) finds 61% of Americans say voluntary AI industry commitments are 'not enough'; 54% want government-set rules. Google DeepMind's SynthID Bio watermarks AI-designed proteins via amino acid and 3D coordinate tweaks, matching unwatermarked hit rates in wet-lab tests (VEGF-A, SARS-CoV-2 RBD, PD-L1). C5R's SciUniverse benchmark (92 tasks, 17 families) tests frontier models in automated labs: Claude Fable 5.1 leads at 45.3% pass rate ($40.61/task). And a DeepMind paper argues AI science needs an 'Automated Scientific Economy' to allocate scarce physical resources.
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