Claude did not invent scorpion antivenom
An investment firm attempted to use Anthropic's Claude AI to develop a new scorpion antivenom to prove AI's potential in drug discovery, but the experiment failed. Experts noted the firm lacked biological expertise, and the project highlighted the limitations of current AI models in complex scientific tasks.
Why it matters
The story illustrates the hype surrounding AI in specialized fields like biotechnology and the risks of non-experts attempting to bypass safety guardrails.
An investment research firm wanted to prove AI could revolutionize drug development. So they teamed up with Anthropic to see whether an unreleased version of Claude could make scorpion antivenom. It couldn’t. It came up with some promising starting points, but nothing close to an actual drug, experts tell The Verge.
Citrini Research, the firm behind the experiment, admitted that “none of us could claim to know anything about AI as it related to biology.” That didn’t stop it from trying to make a drug from scratch — or publishing a blog post titled “We Wanted to Use Claude to Create a New Drug. Here’s What Happened.” The account came complete with rhetorical questions like “Why don’t we try to use AI to create a new drug?”, a blow-by-blow account of its amateurish scientific adventures, and a quote from Charles Darwin.
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