Understand the models.

Physically isolating computers — known as air gapping — can make it harder for AI agents to reach external targets or for outside systems to enter a test environment. However, researchers interviewed by The Verge say the measure reduces the realism of evaluations, which often require external services, APIs and digital infrastructure, while increasing costs and slowing iterations. Applying it to every experiment could also delay the development of new models and may not be feasible at the scale of frontier AI labs.

Isolation would not eliminate every risk: agents could still compromise systems inside the environment or produce dangerous artifacts if they were moved outside it. The barrier could also be breached through methods such as USB devices or signals transmitted by internal components, although those routes are difficult. Researchers therefore describe air gapping as a trade-off between safety and realism, rather than a definitive technical solution.

Sources: The Verge

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Anthropic says Claude identified a previously unknown enzyme system in the DNA of bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria. The company says the system has properties resembling CRISPR and can perform operations such as cutting, copying, and pasting DNA — an interpretation that the broader research community still needs to validate. Claude analyzed about 200,000 enzymes using 950 agents over 21 hours and consuming 210 million tokens; Anthropic says the work was done “mostly, though not entirely,” by the model.

Human scientists conducted the physical experiments at a laboratory in the San Francisco Bay Area, limited to BSL-1 and BSL-2 biosafety levels and without handling pathogens that can infect humans. CEO Dario Amodei said a fully automated lab could be possible in the future with safeguards, but that this is not happening today.

Sources: TechCrunch, Tecnoblog

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