Anthropic Says Claude Found a Crispr-Like System; Experts Note Experiments Haven't Been Run
AI does scan genomic databases fast, but the finding is unverified and the enzyme itself was identified back in 2021.
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On September 23, Anthropic announced that about 950 Claude agents, running simultaneously, took 21.5 hours to surface an enzyme system resembling Crispr from genomic databases, naming it ART. The technical report has not been peer-reviewed.
Le Cong, a Stanford professor, says the experiments are still in the queue while the PR is already live. Jason Gill, a microbiologist at Texas A&M University, points out that his team identified this same reverse transcriptase in a 2021 paper; what is new is the repeat sequences Claude flagged around it.
Whether the system can work as a gene-editing tool remains unknown, and Anthropic itself says it does not yet understand what the system does.