SOCHI, June 11. /TASS/. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies may pose a serious biosecurity threat, because they can be used to create a dangerous toxin that previously not existed on the planet, Russia’s chief sanitary doctor Anna Popova said.
"Today, we are talking not only about microorganisms, but also about toxins. It is possible to create a system that will analyze all possible combinations of atoms, all possible sequences of amino acids and come up with a result that previously not existed on the planet," said Popova, who heads the Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing.
"There are risks, and they are being evaluated," she said. "We need to reduce these risks to a minimal level and to make sure that new instruments, such as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, are used for the benefit of the humanity. These instruments are extremely powerful, and, possibly, we still don’t realize their full potential," she continued.
"The Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction is a very important instrument of control. <…> There is no other form of control on the international level. Of course, there should be. We have already launched a discussion on the subject, and we are going to continue it," Russia’s chief sanitary official said.