Artificial intelligence could be misused to design biological weapons, warn scientists after their AI came up with 40,000 potentially toxic drugs in just six hours 

• Computer algorithms can identifying new forms of antibiotics or Covid-19
• But technology could easily be manipulated to search for toxic nerve agents
• Read more: AI reimagines popular brand logos in the style of famous artists

Artificial intelligence could be misused to design highly toxic chemical and biological weapons, warn scientists.

The computer algorithms are a force for good, identifying new forms of antibiotics and medicine to combat Covid infection.

But four researchers involved in AI-based drug discovery have now found that the technology could easily be manipulated to search for toxic nerve agents.

The four were asked by the Swiss Federal Institute for Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection to look at whether AI could be used by those with ulterior motives – and their AI came up with 40,000 potentially toxic drugs in six hours.

They have highlighted their concerns in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.

Fabio Urbina, lead author of the paper, told online technology magazine The Verge the exercise made them realise ‘all we have to do is flip the switch round and say, “instead of going away from toxicity, what if we go towards toxicity?” ’

Their AI started ‘producing all of these [toxic] molecules, a lot of which look like chemical warfare agents’.

Some of the molecules were ‘more toxic than VX’, a nerve agent developed by the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Lab in the 1950s, which kills by muscle paralysis.

Mr Urbina, of Collaboration Pharmaceuticals in North Carolina, USA, said: ‘The concern was how easy it was. A lot of the things we used are out there for free. You can download a toxicity dataset from anywhere.’