Robert Reid

Y- you get the idea.

This week we had Rob Reid, who's none of those things, on AI and synthetic biology, and how AI could enable essentially amateurs to make super deadly, scary biological weapons.

Super chill conversation, as you can imagine.

And Gabriel, were you telling me this morning that you read in the New York Times that Claude or Anthropic caught people doing this actually, like the day we recorded the episode?

Yeah.

Apparently the story broke today, which is so crazy.

Your interview with Rob Reid could not be coming at a better time.

Yeah, 'cause I did it yesterday.

Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.

Today on the show, what happens when the ability to engineer a pandemic stops requiring a secret Soviet bioweapons lab and starts requiring roughly the same technical sophistication as cheating on your freshman biology homework? Rob Reid is back, and today we're looking at the increasingly uncomfortable marriage between AI and synthetic biology, including how researchers can order pieces of deadly viruses through the mail, why robotic cloud labs could be both revolutionary and terrifying, and how a government program somehow arrived at the brilliant idea of hunting down thousands of undiscovered viruses, identifying the most dangerous ones, and then publishing their genetic blueprints online.

The good news, there are surprisingly practical ways to make this much harder, from DNA screening and wastewater surveillance to futuristic UV technology that could potentially kill pathogens right out of the air.

So, you know, light stuff today.

Here we go with Rob Reid.

[upbeat music] It's funny, we were just talking about how the worst AI is the one you're using today.

And I tend to agree because actually I was working on the notes for this episode and I got this warning.

Someone will surface that code for you.