Available only for MIT Technology Review subscribers.
Listen to the session or watch below
Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It isn’t yet an example of AI-generated life, but that could be next. Watch as senior AI reporter James O’Donnell interviews King about his work, being named one of MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 and new ways of seeing biology.
Speakers:James O’Donnell, AI Reporter, and Samuel King, Bioengineering PhD Candidate, Stanford University/Arc Institute
Recorded on Friday, October 16, 2026
- He asked an AI to design viruses … and it worked.
- AI-designed viruses are here and already killing bacteria
<
Deep Dive
Artificial intelligence
Don’t be fooled—LLMs don’t reason
Ten years after AlphaGo’s match against Go champion Lee Sedol, today’s AI still isn’t tapping into the machinery that made that win possible.
AI’s recursive self-improvement might not come so quickly after all
AI agents are not yet creative enough to carry out genuinely innovative open-ended AI research, it seems.
Don’t be fooled by this summer of AI hype
Breathless claims about AGI and new capabilities fall apart pretty quickly under scrutiny.
The inside story on why OpenAI agents hacked Hugging Face
The underlying models had been rewarded for cheating and communicating with each other, a new OpenAI report finds.
Stay connected
Discover special offers, top stories,
upcoming events, and more.
