The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, in collaboration with the National Academy of Medicine, is seeking suggestions for experts to participate in the new activity, Strengthening Preparedness Against Novel Biological Threat Agents Enabled Through Artificial Intelligence and Other Emerging Technologies. This activity consists of an international workshop and consensus study to examine the challenges of responding to unique biological threats enabled by AI, opportunities to accelerate MCM against AI-enabled threats, and strategies for reducing associated risks. Specifically, this activity will clarify the landscape of AI models and biological data that could generate such threats and that are relevant to MCM development; identify opportunities to accelerate the development of countermeasures germane to AI-enabled biological threats; and evaluate strategies to reduce dual-use risks across scientific practice, model development, data generation, and information sharing.
Using these suggestions, National Academies staff will be looking to build an international committee of approximately 12-15 volunteer experts across all sectors for the consensus study and a committee of 5-7 experts for the workshop. In addition, National Academies will also collect information for potential speakers, participants, and peer reviewers for any publications resulting from the activity.
Based on the Statement of Task, staff are looking for expertise particularly in the following areas:
- Computational biology and bioinformatics
- Life sciences, including microbiology, virology, immunology, and synthetic biology
- AI/ML
- Biosecurity and national security
- Medical countermeasure research and development (vaccines and therapeutics)
- Biomanufacturing
- Public health emergency preparedness and response
- Data security