Anthropic says Claude has found something 'previously unknown' in the human body

AI firm Anthropic has claimed that its system has uncovered something never done before in biological research.

The artificially intelligent bot Claude has discovered something ‘previously unknown’ in the human body, according to Anthropic, after it reportedly assisted a team of researchers in making a scientific breakthrough.

Claude helped the experts to identify a previously uncharacterized enzyme system in DNA that could eventually prove useful for gene editing.

The company has shared that the system appears to be a previously unknown molecular mechanism, although researchers are still working out exactly what it does and whether it has any practical applications.

An announcement on the matter also revealed for the first time that Anthropic has established a biological research laboratory in California, where researchers can take theories generated by Claude and put them to the test.

How does Claude analyze DNA?

In the lab, Claude is reportedly able to examine DNA sequences linked to proteins whose functions are not yet understood.

The AI is capable of analyzing existing scientific research along with large quantities of genomic data, where it looks for patterns that could point researchers towards something worth investigating.

Anthropic has stressed that this research ‘involves only the lower-levels of the biosafety risk level’ and that the AI doesn’t ‘handle pathogens that can infect humans’.

On X, formerly Twitter, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated: “Eventually it may even be possible for Claude itself to safely perform the experiments by autonomously controlling lab equipment, with appropriate safeguards in place, but we aren’t doing that today.”

He added: “I’m proud of the resources Anthropic has invested in accelerating the public benefits of AI through the life sciences, and we’re aiming both to grow our life sciences team and to work with other scientists to extend this approach to a broad range of problems.”

This news comes despite concerns raised by tech bosses including Amodei himself that the AI industry needs to slow down.

Last month, Amodei even shared an essay where he warned that AI ‘swarms’ could take over the internet in as soon as six months if the industry fails to slow down.

This warning from the mogul was met with support from other figures in the industry, with Elon Musk writing on X: “Dario is right.”

Meanwhile, OpenAI’s Sam Altman added: “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks. Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon.”