The suc­cess­ful cre­ation of func­tion­al new-to-nature virus­es designed by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence has prompt­ed renewed calls for stronger over­sight of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and AI-enabled genome design. In the EU, mean­while, dis­cus­sions are focussed on pre­vent­ing the mali­cious mis­use of biotech­nol­o­gy, while pay­ing lit­tle atten­tion to the biosafe­ty ques­tions raised by increas­ing­ly capa­ble AI genome design tools.

Nation­al GMO coex­is­tence rules still apply to all genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) plants, includ­ing those dereg­u­lat­ed under new EU laws, a new legal opin­ion shows. This is because the EU has nev­er exhaus­tive­ly reg­u­lat­ed these areas, also not in its lat­est Reg­u­la­tion (EU) 2006/1388 on plants derived from “new genom­ic tech­niques” (NGT). The Ger­man fed­er­al min­istry of agri­cul­ture dis­putes this find­ing,…

Arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence is no longer just trans­form­ing apps, office work, or search engines. It is increas­ing­ly begin­ning to reshape agri­cul­ture, food sys­tems, biol­o­gy, labour, and even liv­ing organ­isms them­selves. Yet these devel­op­ments are rarely dis­cussed togeth­er. This event series, host­ed by Save Our Seeds togeth­er with peo­ple from the AI, sci­ence, envi­ron­men­tal and civ­il soci­ety com­mu­ni­ties, cre­ates space for exact­ly these con­ver­sa­tions.