Researchers from Johns Hopkins, Oxford, Stanford, Columbia and NYU are calling for guardrails on certain infectious disease datasets that could enable AI to design deadly viruses. Once high-risk biological data hits the open web, it can’t be recalled — and regulation won’t matter if the knowledge itself is already widely distributed. An international group of more than 100 researchers has endorsed a framework to govern certain biological data the same way we handle sensitive health records. The debate comes as the Trump administration pushes an aggressive “move fast” AI agenda. The White House’s Genesis Mission — announced in late 2025 — aims to build AI systems trained on massive scientific datasets to speed research breakthroughs.

Full report : Over 100 researchers from Johns Hopkins, Oxford, and more call for guardrails on some infectious disease datasets that could enable AI to design deadly viruses.