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Review
. 2024 Feb 28:12:1359768.
doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1359768. eCollection 2024.

The whack-a-mole governance challenge for AI-enabled synthetic biology: literature review and emerging frameworks

Trond Arne Undheim  1   2
Affiliations
Review

The whack-a-mole governance challenge for AI-enabled synthetic biology: literature review and emerging frameworks

Trond Arne Undheim. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. .

Abstract

AI-enabled synthetic biology has tremendous potential but also significantly increases biorisks and brings about a new set of dual use concerns. The picture is complicated given the vast innovations envisioned to emerge by combining emerging technologies, as AI-enabled synthetic biology potentially scales up bioengineering into industrial biomanufacturing. However, the literature review indicates that goals such as maintaining a reasonable scope for innovation, or more ambitiously to foster a huge bioeconomy do not necessarily contrast with biosafety, but need to go hand in hand. This paper presents a literature review of the issues and describes emerging frameworks for policy and practice that transverse the options of command-and-control, stewardship, bottom-up, and laissez-faire governance. How to achieve early warning systems that enable prevention and mitigation of future AI-enabled biohazards from the lab, from deliberate misuse, or from the public realm, will constantly need to evolve, and adaptive, interactive approaches should emerge. Although biorisk is subject to an established governance regime, and scientists generally adhere to biosafety protocols, even experimental, but legitimate use by scientists could lead to unexpected developments. Recent advances in chatbots enabled by generative AI have revived fears that advanced biological insight can more easily get into the hands of malignant individuals or organizations. Given these sets of issues, society needs to rethink how AI-enabled synthetic biology should be governed. The suggested way to visualize the challenge at hand is whack-a-mole governance, although the emerging solutions are perhaps not so different either.

Keywords: AI risk; biorisk; biosafety; biosecurity; dual risk; generative AI; synthetic biology.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
PRISMA diagram for literature review and citation analysis.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Keyword categories relevant to synthetic biology, AI, governance and innovation.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Synbio issue clusters.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
AI-synbio accelerants and use cases.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Biomanufacturing ingredients.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Synbio’s whack-a-mole governance challenge.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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