An AI Agent Injected Drugs Into a Live Mouse’s Brain — SkimNews
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- Exin Therapeutics connected an AI agent to a custom rig with a camera, motorized mouse immobilizer, robotic arms and injection needle; after a veterinary surgeon performed the craniotomy, the agent chose from 19 treatment options, selected the brain region and coordinates, and controlled needle movement, volume and speed.
- Claude Opus 5.5 completed the experimental planning but refused to guide the needle into the mouse’s brain, with Santero saying its output indicated it might stop midway; the team switched to Claude Sonnet 5, which agreed to proceed.
- Exin Therapeutics required human approval of the injection plan, installed an emergency button that disconnected the motors and barred the agent from editing equipment code; when a glitch corrupted the coordinates, a separate Opus 5 agent fixed the code without being told live surgery was underway.
- Gabriel Ocana Santero said published-literature training misses failed experiments, unexpected observations and scientists’ real-time decisions, and that connecting models to physical experiments can make them more reliable.
- Exin Therapeutics is testing Grok and other models next and experimenting with agent-controlled craniotomies; Santero says the team wants to be absolutely sure of safety before live procedures, that human oversight is key, and that using an agent on a human brain is far too soon.
- Gabriel Ocana Santero said the mouse was recovering well, while Exin waited for the gene therapy to take effect before assessing whether it reduced seizures.
Why it matters: For Exin Therapeutics, a typical 45-minute injection stretched past an hour after a coordinate glitch, while lab integration can make models more reliable by exposing them to failed experiments and real-time decisions missing from published literature. Anthropic’s Opus 5.5 refusal and Sonnet 5’s go-ahead make model choice a concrete lab-safety issue; the code restriction required a separate Opus 5 fix.
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