OpenAI and Los Alamos National Laboratory have announced a collaborative research partnership to evaluate the safe use of multimodal AI models in bioscience laboratory settings.
OpenAI has joined forces with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) to study the safe application of AI in scientific laboratory environments, with a focus on advancing bioscientific research. This partnership aligns with the recent White House Executive Order on AI development and use, which tasks national laboratories with evaluating the capabilities of frontier AI models.
The collaboration will centre on an evaluation study to assess how frontier models, like GPT-4o, can assist humans in performing tasks in physical laboratory settings, through multimodal capabilities such as vision and voice. This study is expected to be the first of its kind, contributing to state-of-the-art research on AI biosecurity evaluations.
Mira Murati, OpenAI's Chief Technology Officer, emphasised the partnership's significance in advancing scientific research while understanding and mitigating risks. Nick Generous, deputy group leader for Information Systems and Modeling at LANL, highlighted the potential benefits and risks of AI in science, noting that LANL's new AI Risks Technical Assessment Group will lead this work.
The evaluation will involve testing multimodal frontier models in a lab setting, assessing the abilities of both experts and novices, to perform and troubleshoot safe protocols, consisting of standard laboratory experimental tasks. These tasks will serve as proxies for more complex procedures that may pose dual-use concerns.
This research extends previous work by incorporating wet lab techniques and multiple modalities, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of AI's potential impact on bioscientific research and laboratory practices.
By combining private sector innovation with public sector expertise, this collaboration aims to set new standards for AI safety and efficacy in the sciences, potentially paving the way for groundbreaking advancements in bioscience and healthcare.