The Economist.

Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Bloor. Today on the show, are there any safe assets left to invest in and why German bread is on a role?

But first...

... But first... In recent, the list of existential anxieties has only mounted.

War, nuclear war, climate change, well, don't expect any reassurance from me.

Now with the rise of artificial intelligence, another potentially civilization-ending threat is gaining momentum.

For the past few decades, governments have worried that thanks to advances in synthetic biology, it is easier than ever to develop biological weapons.

Arthur Holland-Michel writes about emerging technologies.

Now AI is making it even easier.

Arthur, you're predicting the end of humanity here.

How might that happen?

AI has become exceptionally good at doing biology.

Leading language models have surpassed human virologists on things like bioinformatics and troubleshooting complex experiments.

The worry is these same capabilities could enable novices to access a level of capability

that previously only existed in the hands of a very small number of

governments. So what role exactly is AI going to play? The essential role that many are worried

about is that they will provide what's called uplift. They will essentially give people who

don't know how to do science a boost. One expert who used AI in a study published

last year to help guide him through the trickiest parts of assembling poliovirus, described the model

as being like an infinitely patient tutor who had read every scientific paper ever published.

And so it was able to guide him with the idea being that someone who's never laid hands on a

pipette could have an AI assistant at their side. And when they get something wrong,

...