Claude failed to invent scorpion antivenom — SkimNews
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- Citrini Research partnered with Anthropic to use an unreleased version of Claude to design scorpion antivenom, spending nearly $50,000 on compute costs covered by Anthropic.
- Anthropic provided Citrini with access to an advanced Claude model without biosecurity guardrails and allowed the experiment to run from its offices, generating nearly 320,000 protein candidates in 64 hours.
- Citrini Research sent 211 AI-designed protein candidates to Adaptyv Bio and Twist Biosciences for testing, paying around $150,000, with only 17 proteins showing binding activity against four of five targeted toxins.
- Experts from the Technical University of Denmark stated the results were technically promising but premature, emphasizing that binding does not equate to neutralizing toxins or creating a safe, effective medicine.
- Andreas Bender, professor of machine learning in medicine at Khalifa University, noted that designing binding proteins is already a solvable problem without AI, and the real challenge lies in translating them into working treatments.
Why it matters: Citrini and Anthropic spent nearly $200,000 to demonstrate AI’s role in early-stage drug discovery, but the results highlight a gap between generating molecular candidates and developing actual medicines — a reality check for investors banking on AI-driven biotech breakthroughs.
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